Tagged: employment litigation
A recent trend in U.S. employment law has been the adoption of stricter and stricter tests for when a worker may be classified as an independent contractor rather than an employee. Independent contractor relationships are often less expensive and easier for employers to administer since employers are not responsible for providing healthcare benefits to independent...
When one thinks of the law, one often thinks of hard and fast rules. Employers cannot fire employees for a discriminatory or a retaliatory reason. Employees must be paid at least minimum wage. And so on. The law governing hostile work environment claims in the United States, however, is not so easily defined and applied....
Like Canada, the United States has federal legislation protecting employees with disabilities. While Canada has the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Human Rights Act, the United States has the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). While both Canadian and U.S. laws protect disabled employees from discrimination, the ADA has very specific procedures and...
The default rule in most U.S. states is at-will employment. This means that either the employee or the employer may terminate the employment relationship at any time, without notice, for any reason—other than a discriminatory or retaliatory reason. A reason is discriminatory if it is based upon an individual’s status as a member of a...
In the United States, employers are required to pay employees overtime (1.5 times the employee’s hourly rate) for hours worked over 40 per week. In some states, such as California, employers are required to pay overtime if employees work more than 8 hours in a day. Like Canada, U.S. employees may be exempt from overtime...
Harassment has been in the news a lot lately in the United States, with several high-profile terminations at well-known companies. Companies are losing millions of dollars, not just in settlements and verdicts, but in lost customers and bad publicity. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, is the administrative agency responsible for enforcing laws prohibiting...
Canadian employment law is, in many ways, far more employee favorable than U.S. employment law. With the exception of a few states, employment in the United States is “at-will.” This generally means that either the employer or the employee may terminate the employment relationship without cause and without notice, so long as the reason for...