Posted by LLSG, February 3, 2012
More than 500 current and former female employees of Wal-Mart that were part of the failed class action lawsuit have filed discrimination claims with the EEOC in an effort to protect their right to pursue individual and class action pay and promotion claims. January 27 was the deadline for women in five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and North Carolina – to purse their claims. Employees in the other 45 states have until May 25 to file with the EEOC and thousands of females who previously filed class action claims are expected to do so.
Posted by LLSG, January 25, 2012
Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation (NPC) has agreed to settle class action wage and hour claims. The claims were brought in 2006 by a class of NPC sales representatives. The settlement, which is subject to court approval, will provide a payment of up to $99 million dollars to eligible class members to compensate for years of overtime pay. NPC maintains that sales representatives should be classified as exempt from overtime under FLSA standards and state laws because of the autonomy and incentive plans associated with the role.
Posted by LLSG, January 12, 2012
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that Pepsi Beverages Co. will pay $3.13M to settle a race discrimination lawsuit involving criminal background checks. Pepsi’s former policy of not hiring workers with arrest records, even if they had never been convicted of an offense, was found to have disproportionately excluded more than 300 African American applicants.
No evidence of intentional discrimination was found and Pepsi has worked with the EEOC to revise its background check process. The EEOC has taken an aggressive stance on criminal background checks and criminal history checks that disadvantage African Americans and Hispanics in the hiring process.
Posted by LLSG, August 29, 2011
Employers are predicting new guidelines from EEOC that will govern the use of criminal-background checks during the hiring process after attending hearings last month in Washington on the role that arrest and conviction records should or should not play in employment screening. Many experts believe new guidelines are needed but some believe it would be a mistake to implement changes that fail to take into account the hiring challenges facing employers today.
Stephen Saltzburg, a professor at George Washington Law School in Washington, told the commission the “collateral consequences of criminal records for employment opportunities represent one of the more challenging issues facing our justice system and our nation.” Because concerns over making a wrong hiring decisions are so great, he said, companies frequently deploy a broad response that results in “unjustified and discriminatory barriers to persons whose criminal records are unrelated to the employment at issue and whose records maintained by government databases are inaccurate or incomplete.” We see the same broad response in the use of credit history checks.
Employer groups, asked EEOC to craft any new guidelines carefully and 60 employer associations sent the EEOC a letter that said “attempts to ease the unemployment situation or re-entry desires should not come at the expense of keeping people and businesses safe from physical or financial harm.”
David French, senior vice president for government relations at the Washington-based National Retail Federation, stressed the need for employers to be able to ask about criminal backgrounds on employment applications. “The retail industry wants to keep our workplaces safe,” he said. “Removing a first line of defense, specifically the criminal-background-history question on an employment application, leaves retailers, shoppers and the entire business community at a disadvantage.”
Stephanie Hughes Kernick, executive director of the National Association of Professional Background Screeners in Morrisville, N.C. says “companies have the responsibility to create a safe working environment, yet their hands would be tied because one of the more important tools for doing so would be taken away from them.”
We at LLSG agree with any approach that limits the use of criminal (and credit history) checks in employment screening and forces employers to tailor their policies. Employers should be cautious of blanket policies that exclude applicants based on their criminal history (or credit score.) Where those policies exist, an employer should be ready to articulate how the policy is consistent with business necessity or required by law. Narrowly tailored policies are more likely to survive legal scrutiny than across the board bans. You can read what we’ve said on the issue previously and find a summary of the available research here.
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Credit: Human Resource Executive Online
Posted by LLSG, July 7, 2011
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission – the agency of the United States Government that enforces the federal employment discrimination laws – will hold a meeting focusing on the use of criminal records for employment screening background checks on Tuesday, July 26, in Washington, D.C., according to a recent Alert from the National Association of Professional Background Screeners.
The NAPBS, a non-profit trade association representing the interests of companies offering employment background screening, believes the July 26th meeting “could be a critical step in the Commission’s adoption of policies that could significantly impact how employers use criminal background checks for employment purposes.”
The full EEOC meeting will include all five Commissioners and although a formal agenda has not yet been released, the NAPBS expects that multiple panels will include academics, lawyers, government officials, and people denied employment due to their criminal histories.
The EEOC currently has guidelines on how employers may use criminal records that makes the use of a blanket “no hire” policy that excludes job applicants with a criminal history unlawful under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 since it discriminates against minority groups with higher rates of criminal convictions. Employers must also show that they considered the following three factors to determine whether a decision not to hire an applicant due to a criminal conviction was justified by business necessity; the nature and gravity of the offense or offenses, the time that has passed since the conviction or completion of the sentence, and the nature of the job held or sought.
November 2 - 5, 2011 - The 5th Annual Section of Labor and Employment Law Conference will provide an opportunity to meet and talk with top practitioners representing employees, employers and unions, as well as neutrals...