On February 18, 2010 the EEOC released new regulations that will address the meaning of "Reasonable Factors Other than Age" (RFOA) under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). Dennis Westlind of Stoel Rives has an excellent post on the law behind the proposed regulation. To establish the RFOA defense under the new rules, an employer would have to demonstrate that the employment practice was both (a) reasonably...

More and more small businesses are becoming involved in 'service and supply' contracting with the US government. Navigating the waters of requirements and regulations can be difficult for those new to the process of government contracting. The exact requirements and regulations that apply depend on the characteristics of your business, the types of contracts you have been awarded, etc. Legal counsel is best positioned to...

Experiments rarely tell us what we expect. That's the dirty secret of science. - Kevin Dunbar, Director of the Laboratory For Complex Thinking and Reasonsing, University of Toronto, Scarborough I began using Twitter in late September of this year, largely as an experiment. There were two primary motivators for the experiment. First, my partners and I were curious about using social media for business development purpos...

The issue of fairness is a dominant theme in today's employment environment. Employers and employees alike are concerned about equity in all areas of employment, from hiring decisions to promotion opportunities, to compensation and benefits.How does an employer know whether its employes are being 'fairly' compensated? Examining the compensation structure is best done through a comprehensive self-audit. This self-audit is ty...

Is a compensation system that links pay to length of service discriminatory? The UK Court of Appeal thinks so, according to the October 20, 2009 ruling regarding Christine Wilson's allegations. Ms. Wilson, an inspector with the Health and Safety Executive, claimed her pay agreement with the body was unfair because it was linked to length of service. She claimed the agreement was 'prejudiced against females' who broke the...

IntroductionUnder federal affirmative action regulations, federal contractors are required to conduct an annual self-evaluation of compensation with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity. Even though the self-evaluation is required, published affirmative action regulations have been virtually silent regarding the methodology federal contractors should use to perform this annual self-evaluation. This changed in June 2006, w...

Using social networking sites for recruiting is not a new phenomenon; three years ago, Maureen Crawford-Hentz, a recruiter for Osram Sylvania, said "Social networking technology is the absolutely the best thing to happen to recruiting -- ever."It seems as though enthusiasm for social networking within the recruiter ranks has not diminished. In June of this year, LinkedIn launched the "Recruiting with LinkedIn Blog". Matt Wa...

I came across two items in my feed reader that surprised me. One item explained how to negotiate a discrimination settlement, and the other explained how to win an age discrimination lawsuit. The surprising thing was not the topic of these items, but where these items were posted: eHow. If you're not familiar with the website eHow.com, it is an online knowledge resource offering step-by step instructions on "how to do ju...

I recently came across a post by Tracy Coenen of Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting. Her post (which can be found here) posed the following question: Can expert witnesses participate in social media? (And should they?) This is a very interesting question; with the presence of social media in our lives expanding every day, it is a question that is sure to be on the minds of many. But perhaps the real question here is wh...

The Fair Pay Act of 2009 amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and states that the 180-day statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay claim regarding pay discrimination resets with each new discriminatory paycheck. This Act is a direct response to the Supreme Court's decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co, which held that the statute of limitations for presenting an equal-pay claim begins at the date on which...