Salary caps, per se, aren't illegal, according to Elizabeth Grossman, an attorney at the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces the Age Discrimination in Employment Act protecting workers 40 and older. ''An employer may have legitimate financial reasons for doing so,'' Grossman said.

A proposed bill could ban discrimination against height and weight in Massachusetts. The Boston Herald reports state Representative Byron Rushing wants the state to offer legal protection based on body size.

How many Americans quietly shuddered while watching Eliot Spitzer's stellar career disintegrate? Even for those with far lesser embarrassments, word of a big mistake -- an affair between married co-workers, perhaps -- often spreads at lightning speed.

Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have cast it as an outrage that should be a key target for the next president: a tax break they say encourages employers to ship American jobs abroad. The charge could be dismissed as typical campaign-trail exaggeration during a Democratic primary season marked by populism, except for one thing. Many analysts say it's true.

A court in California awarded baristas at Starbucks cafes in California $105 million on Thursday, ruling that the company had wrongly allowed supervisors to share in tips. The judgment by Judge Patricia Y. Cowett of California Superior Court in San Diego could have broader ramifications for the restaurant industry in California and around the country.

A husband, wife and daughter could not assert a prima facie case of sex discrimination under Title VII based on "familial status" after they were discharged from a nonprofit agency in part because the father's hiring and direct supervision of the wife and daughter "were ill-advised under the company's discretionary anti-nepotism policy," the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. (Adamson v Multi Cmty Diversified Servs, Inc, 10thCir, 90 EPD ¶43,109)

The Arkansas Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that a former Wal-Mart employee wasn't wrongfully terminated after he reported inhumane workplace conditions at Costa Rican suppliers.

For years, William Zammer Jr. has relied on 100 seasonal foreign employees to turn down beds, boil lobsters and serve cocktails at the restaurants, golf course and inn he owns on Cape Cod and in nearby Plymouth. This summer, however, the foreign workers will not be returning, and Mr. Zammer, like other seasonal employers across the nation, is scrambling to find replacements.

Seven out of 10 office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by information in the workplace, and more than two in five say they are headed for a data "breaking point," according to a recently released Workplace Productivity Survey, commissioned by LexisNexis -- a provider of business information solutions.

Just as he's about to become the state's first black governor, David Paterson faces allegations he fostered reverse discrimination as state Senate Democratic leader. Paterson is battling a federal suit by a white staff photographer who says he was fired in 2003 so his job could be given to a black man.

Nearly 400 current and former employees of Aluminum Casting & Engineering Co. are eligible for back wages stemming from the withholding of pay raises during a 1995 union organizing campaign. Employees of the company, also known as Ace Co., are eligible to collect as much as $1,250 each in back pay, according to the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers union, which led the organizing campaign.

Fifteen black and Latino airport workers in Dallas who alleged that white co-workers intimidated them with swastikas, nooses and other racist symbols have settled a lawsuit for nearly $1.9 million, their lawyer and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced last week.

A group of workers from India who claim they were duped into taking jobs at Gulf Coast shipyards and subjected to abusive living conditions are suing the company that hired them. A class-action lawsuit filed Friday in federal court accuses Signal International, an oil rig construction and repair company, of exploiting and defrauding more than 500 Indian nationals who worked at its facilities in Pascagoula, Mississippi, and Orange, Texas.

For decades, China's massive workforce of factory hands and construction workers had little choice but to work long hours in often poor conditions for pitifully low salaries. But a mushrooming of factories, even in the country's sluggish interior, mean that these days workers have more clout than ever when hunting for jobs. Wages are being pushed up and firms' margins are being squeezed.

Taking a sick day is not that easy for some workers. Leonard, a reader from Baltimore, argues that sick workers whose employers offer a "paid-time off" or PTO bank -- where vacation, sick and personal days are lumped together -- show up for their job because this increasingly popular system encourages the practice called presenteeism.

Federal job discrimination complaints filed by workers against private employers shot up 9 percent last year, the biggest annual increase since the early 1990s.

Workplace bullying, such as belittling comments, persistent criticism of work and withholding resources, appears to inflict more harm on employees than sexual harassment, say researchers who presented their findings at a recent conference.

Federal job-discrimination complaints by workers against private employers rose by 9 percent last year, the biggest annual increase since the early 1990s. The data released Wednesday by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission show that allegations of discrimination based on race, retaliation and sex were the most frequent.

With a merger agreement between Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines hanging in the balance, the highest stakes may have switched from management to the leaders of the two companies' pilot unions who have been unable to combine seniority lists. Northwest pilot chairman Dave Stevens and Delta pilot chairman Lee Moak both insisted that the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) be brought into merger talks at the front end of any deal.

Last week, the Supreme Court issued an important Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) opinion, Federal Express Corp. v. Holowecki. Specifically, the Court considered whether a plaintiff had complied with the necessary procedural formalities required under the ADEA before filing a lawsuit. The opinion is quite significant in that it departs both in tone and substance from recent anti-plaintiff rulings in employment discrimination cases. It is thus a welcome sign of at least a modicum of commitment on the Court's part to enforcing the civil rights laws.

Whether the economy is in a recession right now or not, workers are starting to feel wary about job security and professional prospects. But there is a sliver of good news.

A Montgomery County (MD) Circuit Court jury awarded a Frederick woman $1 million for sexual harassment against an auto dealership.
The verdict reached Feb. 29 in a retrial came down on the side of Gail Sterling in a case against Atlantic Automotive Corp., where she worked from May 2001 until she was fired in March 2002.

He's nice to you in private, but berates and ignores you in front of clients. Time to get manipulative.

After an unusually emotional debate bursting with political indignation and personal anguish, the State Senate narrowly approved legislation Monday that would make New Jersey the third state in the nation to give employees the right to take paid leave to care for a newborn or a sick relative.

U.S. workers are silently suffering from a dramatic lack of sleep, costing companies billions of dollars in lost productivity, says a new study. Nearly three in 10 workers have become very sleepy, or even fallen asleep, at work in the past month, according to a first-ever study on sleep and the workplace by the non-profit National Sleep Foundation.

According to the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, the number who express their love for their mom, their boyfriends and their Harleys on their bodies is increasing. In 2006, nearly one-quarter of Americans had one or more tattoos, compared with only 1 percent 30 years ago, the group says.

With this year's flu epidemic in full swing, nearly half of all U.S. workers who fall ill or have sick kids must decide whether to stay home and lose wages or go to work sick and expose others, a choice many say no one should have to make. Advocates for making paid sick days a basic labor standard say the United States should follow all other developed countries and require businesses to let ill or injured employees miss work without docking their pay or threatening their employment.

One of Los Angeles' largest Chinese-language newspapers was ordered by a federal judge here Friday to pay millions of dollars to 200 employees who were denied years of overtime pay and subjected to other labor law violations. The $5.19 million award, to the employees of The Chinese Daily News, included penalties for violating labor laws as well as 10 percent interest on the original award of $2.5 million, which was granted by a jury in 2007.

Covad Communications and its ex-general counsel have finally laid to rest a sordid, six-year saga of allegations of self-dealing directors, sexual harassment and retaliatory firing. Covad directors agreed to pay the company $7 million to settle a long-running derivative suit originally filed by former GC and co-founder Dhruv Khanna, the San Jose, Calif., telecom company detailed in its annual report.

The failure to file the proper form to complain about job-related age discrimination does not deprive an employee of the ability to go into court later with a discrimination lawsuit, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday. In its relaxed approach to formalities, the 7-to-2 decision marked a decided change in tone for the Roberts court compared with one of the signature decisions of the previous term.

A federal judge upheld the merits of Arizona's landmark employer-sanctions law Thursday, saying it does not overstep the federal government's authority to regulate illegal immigration. U.S. District Judge Neil Wake dismissed arguments by a coalition of business and Latino civil-rights groups that the law unconstitutionally gives the state controls over immigration. Wake noted that the state law controls business licenses and does not determine who should be admitted into the United States.

When men and women get together, be it for cocktails, bowling, or even for work, it's only a matter of time before love is in the air. But when Cupid visits the workplace, "love" can also wind up on company-issued Blackberry units, laptops and office voicemail. And then, unfortunately, it can wind up in court.

The Supreme Court recently granted certiorari in Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. In that case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit severely undercut protection against retaliation for employees who cooperate in an employer's internal investigation of discrimination by providing information that supports the discrimination complaints of other employees. Though making predictions about the Supreme Court's intentions is always risky, one can only hope the Court has taken this case in order to reverse the Sixth Circuit. It should do so in order to ensure that employees cooperating with internal investigations receive the protection they need in order to be able to tell the truth without fear of the consequences.

One of Pepsi's Super Bowl ads provides a humorous take on two deaf men who cannot find the Super Bowl party at a friend's house. The ad was devised, written and acted by PepsiCo. employees with disabilities, and it illustrates how the company values its workers with disabilities. People with disabilities want to work. Employment is key to independence.

Thanks to a recent US Supreme Court decision on a landmark age-bias case, workers can sue employers whose policies discriminate on the basis of age -- even if the policy isn't discriminatory on its face. At the same time, the decision says employers can prevail in defending those same suits simply by demonstrating a legitimate business reason for the policies that have the effect of treating older workers less favorably.

Cases of racial harassment filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission increased 24% last year, a time of racial turmoil that included the Jena Six controversy and an outbreak of noose displays. At the same time, state and city lawmakers have stepped up efforts to make it a crime to intimidate someone with a noose.

New York members of the National Federation of Independent Business voiced near unanimous opposition to bills enacting paid family leave mandates and raising the minimum wage beyond the federal level, a new survey shows. In it, 92 percent of respondents opposed bills mandating that all businesses annually provide up to 12 weeks of paid family leave for employees. More than 80 percent also opposed the idea of increasing the state's minimum wage beyond the federal level.

Help!" the e-mail pleaded. "I value my job, but work for a boss who makes no bones about the fact that work comes first. He lives to work, and assumes that, to work for him, every subordinate needs to comply to the same philosophy. I don't, and can't. I have a family, a home to run, a life outside of work I value very much. How do I continue to do the job I love, yet set boundaries my boss can respect?" Sadly, it's common for me to receive e-mails like this, from frustrated women and men struggling to achieve balance between their work and personal lives.

Could the U.S. Supreme Court be preparing for a major re-examination of key laws governing the workplace? Court watchers have their antennae up after the high court accepted almost a dozen new employment-discrimination cases for review this term. The new cases -- most of which involve age discrimination claims and allegations of retaliation -- could pose new hurdles for employers conducting internal investigations and add new protections for workers who are not the target of such workplace probes.

This protracted campaign season serves as a daily reminder to Americans that we will have a new president in January 2009. Business leaders and labor and employment attorneys will be closely watching to see what agenda accompanies our soon-to-be-inaugurated president. One policy initiative gaining steam is "bully boss" legislation. State lawmakers across the country are presenting bills to protect employees from bullying bosses. Although the definition of bully boss is unclear, it can be summarized in few words: bosses who are jerks.

The nation's employers eliminated 17,000 jobs in January, the government reported Friday, the first decline in the work force in more than four years, and the strongest signal yet that the United States may be in the early stages of a recession. The broad weakness in the job market, which affected many sectors, shows how the collapse of the housing bubble is rippling through the rest of the economy and suggests the likelihood of more pain for millions of American families in the months ahead from job losses, lower real wages and fewer working hours.

With Florida's primary election Jan. 29 and presidential candidates constantly in the news, talking politics around the water cooler is inevitable. An employer should tread carefully. Discussing politics is more of a personal decision for employees, as long as it doesn't interfere with work.

Did you hear the one about the woman who couldn't go to work because her chickens' feet were frozen to the driveway? It's not a joke -- it's an actual excuse given to a boss. Gone are the days when an employee called in sick and coughed a little to make the story believable. Today, workers give a variety of excuses when they stay home from the office. And they're doing it a lot.

It was no coincidence Rep. Albert Wynn chose Tuesday to introduce a bill he dubbed the "second civil rights law of the century." Wynn's bill would improve an existing anti-discrimination and whistleblower-protection law for federal workers, and its introduction was held to coincide with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s holiday.

Most diversity training efforts at American companies are ineffective and even counterproductive in increasing the number of women and minorities in managerial positions, according to an analysis that turns decades of conventional wisdom, government policy and court rulings on their head.

The Supreme Court added two new employment discrimination cases to a docket on which such cases are already well represented. One case concerns protection for employees against retaliation for reporting the discriminatory actions of a supervisor. The other involves age discrimination suits when the employer says that it took an action like laying off a worker for legitimate reasons not related to age.

The Supreme Court agreed Friday to decide whether employees are protected from being fired or demoted if they cooperate with an internal investigation of a supervisor who is accused of discrimination.

In August, a federal judge ordered Gardena-based Southern California Maid Service and Carpet Cleaning to pay nearly $3.5 million in back wages to 385 current and former workers. The case stemmed from a program launched in 2004 by the Labor Department, the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles and other agencies to educate Spanish-speaking workers and employers about their rights and responsibilities, to encourage employees to report abuses and to investigate labor law violations by businesses.

Dov Charney, founder and chief executive of casual fashion giant American Apparel, acknowledges that he has appeared in his underwear many times in front of male and female employees. And yes, on a few occasions during work meetings, he donned a skimpy garment that barely covered his genitals. But those events, he said, have to be understood in the context of the fashion industry. Charney may soon find out how his explanations play in court, when trial starts in a lawsuit brought by a former employee alleging sexual harassment and wrongful termination.

Middle-aged men moving in with parents, wives taking two jobs, veteran workers taking overnight shifts at half their former pay, families moving West -- these are signs of the turmoil and stresses emerging in the little towns and backwoods mobile homes of southeast Ohio, where dozens of factories and several coal mines have closed over the last decade, and small businesses are giving way to big-box retailers and fast-food outlets.

A federal judge has approved a $6.2 million settlement for black and Hispanic sheet metal workers in a 37-year-old lawsuit against a union that critics have called one of the city's most notorious for racial discrimination, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced on Tuesday.

"There ought to be a law!" How many times have we heard or said those words ourselves when encountering some unfairness? Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the same thing last year in the dissenting opinion in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire when she urged Congress to pass a law undoing the damage done by the conservative court majority when it severely limited workers' ability to seek redress in the courts for pay discrimination under Title VII. Now the time has come for Congress to do so, and YOU can help.

Domestic abuse may originate in the home but some prominent U.S. business leaders are backing a campaign to raise awareness about its toll in the workplace, which some estimate runs to billions of dollars.

An appeals court overturned a $1.5 million verdict awarded to a woman who was spanked in front of co-workers in what her employer called a camaraderie-building exercise.

A Pennsylvania company alleged to have systematically fired older workers agreed to pay $156,000 to settle an age discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Are you being persecuted by a workplace bully? You're not alone. A poll by the Employment Law Alliance, a labor and employment lawyers' group, finds that 44 percent of Americans say they have suffered abuse at the office.

A 53-year-old employee who was discharged in a job elimination failed to meet the fourth-prong prima facie requirement for an age bias case in the context of a reduction in force (RIF), concluded the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

It was probably one of the best-read stories in the country this past week: An Iowa casino worker was fired for posting a "Dilbert" comic strip on an office bulletin board. In the strip, Dilbert and another character have the following exchange: "Why does it seem as if most of the decisions in my workplace are made by drunken lemurs?"

A recent decision by the National Labor Relations Board allows companies to restrict the use of their e-mail systems for union activities by their employees.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is struggling to resurrect its call center operations after ending its contract for the services a week ago. To keep the EEOC's 53 offices answering more than 73,000 phone calls and e-mails a month, the agency has hired 37 temporary workers and is using the automatic phone answering system of Vangent Inc., the contractor that previously handled the call center work.

Employers may continue the long-standing practice of taking Medicare into account when structuring the health care benefits voluntarily provided their retired workers, says the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in a rule published in response to a 2000 court decision. In essence, the ruling says employers can spend more on benefits for retirees under 65 years of age than those over 65 without running afoul of age discrimination laws.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a religious discrimination lawsuit against ConocoPhillips on behalf of a worker at its Bayway Refinery who claims his request for a schedule change so he could attend church on Sunday mornings was refused.

Ford Motor Co., two related companies and the United Auto Workers will pay $1.6 million and provide other relief to settle a race discrimination lawsuit. In a class-action suit, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charged that a written test used by Ford, Visteon Corp. and Automotive Components Holdings discriminated against blacks. The test was used to determine eligibility for a skilled trades apprenticeship program.

Every once in a blue moon, a book comes along that seems to articulate my most deep-seated fears about the future of America, its economy and its body politic. I do wish the best for my beloved country, but I see so many ominous signs at every turn: wars seemingly without end or clear purpose; a widening income gap between the financial elite and middle-class families who can no longer afford to own homes; the kowtowing of ambitious politicians in both major parties to special-interest groups; the loss of respect for America around the world.