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FedEx Driver Wins $3.24M in sex discrimination and harassment case
AP (Mark Scolforo) reports; “FedEx Driver Is Awarded $3.24M in Sex Case”
A federal jury in Harrisburg awarded $3.24 million to a former FedEx tractor-trailer driver who claimed she was sexually harassed and had the brakes on her truck sabotaged five separate times in an attempt to intimidate her.
The jury found Federal Express Corp. . [...]
Lou Dobbs on outsourcing/offshoring
Accused of fanning the flames of protectionism contrary to our economic interest in free trade, CNN’s Lou Dobbs defends himself in:“Exporting America: false choices”
You may have noticed recently that I’m being attacked for my views on the exporting of American jobs and my calls for a balanced U.S. trade policy [citing articles in the Financial [...]
Off-topic, but interesting: Atlantic interview with John Kerry biographer
Atlantic Online has this: “The Thoughtful Soldier: Douglas Brinkley, the author of Tour of Duty, on John Kerry’s conflicted but heroic service in Vietnam”
Within a five-year period from 1966 to 1971, John Kerry gave a college graduation speech denouncing the Johnson Administration’s policies in Vietnam, voluntarily entered the United States Navy, requested duty in Vietnam, [...]
Various items on organized labor and politics
Chicago Tribune [reg. req’d] (Reuters) reports impact of SoCal grocery strike on stores’ bottom lines: “Labor fight takes toll at Kroger, Albertson’s”
Kroger Co. and Albertson’s Inc., the nation’s two largest grocery store chain owners, said Tuesday that quarterly results were hit hard by labor turmoil in Southern California and forecast a difficult year ahead. . [...]
More post-mortem on SoCal grocery strike
James F. Peltz, LA Times Staff Writer reports in the LA Times [free regist. required]:“How the Supermarket Strike Was Settled,” an interesting inside look at the negotiations.
While most of California slept, the longest supermarket strike in U.S. history was settled in Steve Stemerman’s hotel room.
It was 3 a.m. Feb. 23 when Stemerman, the United Food [...]
More on 360 Degree Feedback
About.com Human resources with Susan M. Heathfield has this: “360 Degree Feedback: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Defines and Examines Multirater Feedback”
This article explains what 360 degree feedback is: — “a method and a tool that provides each employee the opportunity to receive performance feedback from his or her supervisor and four to [...]
Is pressure to finally start hiring building up in the executive suite and among investors?
Business Week online reports: “What Investors Want Now: Jobs”
No doubt about it, investors like to see Corporate America squeezing the most it can out of its employees. As the economy has bounced back, productivity, or output per worker per hour, has continued to expand. Meanwhile, stock prices have risen 50% from their October, 2002, lows [...]
Bunch more stuff on outsourcing/offshoring
This is a big topic today. We need to understand what’s going on and its ramifications. We don’t really even know for sure what’s going on with the level of employment and job creation (see this post and sources cited therein). If we wrongly jump to the conclusion that this is still [...]
Learned professor comments on Supreme Court’s general Dynamics age discrimination decision
Michael C. Dorf of the Columbia University School of Law writes this in Findlaw: “The Supreme Court’s Recent Ruling that Federal Age Discrimination Law Protects the Old, but not the Young”
Unlike my previous post, Dorf’s criticism is not so much the reliance on legislative history as the failure to adequately consider policy, and he likes [...]
Inappropriate, imature and unprofessional conduct held not sexual harassment
In Henthorn v. Capitol Communications, Inc., No. 03-1018 (8th Cir. 3/5/04), the court held that “repetitive and annoying” requests by a supervisor that the plaintiff go out with him, including late night telephone calls at home, while “inappropriate, immature, and unprofessional,” did not rise to the level of sexual harassment. The conduct was not [...]
What’s going on with the employment data?
FindLaw (Reuters) reports the news on employment in the extremely negative manner everyone is hearing it: “U.S. Job Growth Anemic in February”
The U.S. economy added a paltry 21,000 jobs last month, according to a surprisingly weak government report on Friday that turned up the heat on President Bush as he seeks re-election.
The February jobs [...]
No protection against retaliatory discharge for malicious bad faith filing of unfounded harassment charge
In Mattson v. Caterpillar, Inc., No. 03-2495 (3/4/04), the Seventh Circuit held that summary judgment was properly granted for the employer on a claim that an employee was terminated in retaliation for filing an EEOC sexual harassment charge based on conduct of a co-worker.
The charge was objectively and subjectively unreasonable; the plaintiff had conceded the [...]
Watching what you do and don’t say in response to reference checks
A pair of stories, both from the Christian Science Monitor, discuss the hard choices employers face in responding to reference checks on former employees.
Randy Dotinga writes in the Monitor: “Would you hire this man?”
At many American companies, . . . [w]hen someone asks for references on a potential hire, these bosses are supposed to reveal [...]
Biting critique of union’s handling of socal grocery strike
Michael Hiltzik writes in the LA Times (free registration required): “UFCW Sacrifices Workers While Declaring Victory”
Union officials are insisting that the contract ratified last weekend represents a great victory. UFCW International President Douglas Dority, who hustled himself into retirement Tuesday, issued a statement over the weekend calling the Southern California job action “one of the [...]
Encouraging hard numbers from consumer-driven health plans
AISHealth.com reprints this from the Feb. 20, 2004, issue of its newsletter INSIDE CONSUMER-DIRECTED CARE: “Panel Dispels Common Consumer-Driven Health Myths, Touts Early Results”
Contrary to critics who argue that consumer-driven health plans appeal only to the young and healthy, some plans seem to attract older and far sicker consumers, according to an official from Minneapolis-based [...]
