Whether a work environment is actually sexually hostile depends on whether that’s how an average person would perceive it. A supersensitive person won’t get to sue for sexual harassment if an ordinary person would brush off the alleged harassment.

Probationary university professors whose contracts aren’t renewed because they failed to achieve tenure status can’t use tenure denial alone as the basis of a suit alleging damage to their reputations. They must show that the decision was actually motivated by something like race or sex discrimination.

Offensive postings on the social networking web site Facebook led the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) to fire one employee and discipline seven others.

When workers at Republic Windows & Doors in Chicago were given three days’ notice in December that the plant was closing, they staged a sit-in at the shuttered factory to demand severance pay and benefits. Republic told employees that Bank of America had canceled its financing ...

Terminating an employee is one of the most stressful tasks managers and HR pros will ever have to face. Don't let a difficult job turn into a legal nightmare too. Avoid these common firing mistakes, and you'll probably avoid an expensive trip to court as well.

These days, employees and their attorneys often go to great lengths to intimidate employers. One way to do that is to file a huge lawsuit—one that takes up pages and pages, and includes a laundry list of allegations ... Before you panic, call your attorneys

The EEOC has settled a lawsuit it filed against Texas-based Cadit Co., which was doing work for the San Francisco Municipal Railway. The agency said Cadit allowed a foreman to harass a Chinese-American welder.

Many employers carefully prepare for unemployment compensation hearings, especially if the employee was fired for misconduct. Then, having proven that the employee was fired for some wrongful act, they naively conclude that the same employee can’t turn around and sue them for wrongful discharge.

Government employees frequently have a constitutional right to notice and some sort of a hearing before losing their jobs. And according to a recent federal appeals court decision, that right sometimes extends to a suspension or some other discipline that stops short of termination.

If anything would add to the avalanche of employment suits already burying employers in litigation, it would be providing free legal counsel to employees who sue. Fortunately, at least one federal court hearing a New Jersey case has nixed the idea.

Supervisors and managers, take note: You may be personally liable for aiding and abetting discrimination that is illegal under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.

Gov. Jon Corzine joined the governors of Connecticut and New York to request a $48 million grant for displaced financial workers from U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao.

Being arrested for a crime is not the same as being convicted. After all, citizens are innocent until proven guilty, and many arrests never result in convictions. But the presumption of innocence doesn't mean employers can't suspend employees who have been charged with crimes—if those alleged crimes may affect their ability to do their jobs.

A woman who was fired for allegedly secretly recording a conversation she had with a supervisor about harassment can still sue for sexual harassment, a federal court has ruled. It did not matter that secretly recording conversations may be a crime in Pennsylvania.

The financial meltdown has spelled job creation for one office: The Pennsylvania unemployment hotline recently hired 132 additional staffers.