Prayer Breaks Split Employees

A Colorado employer is facing an unusual situation whereby its Muslim workforce wants prayer breaks during the day.

Rocky Mountain News has the details.

RV Dealer Settles EEOC Complaint

A fired employee of an Alabama RV dealer engineered an EEOC complaint that the dealer ended up settling for $65,000 rather than fighting. Are your payroll records organized and complete?

Myth? Myth? Sexual Harrassment May Not Be What You Think…

HR.blr.com offers this compendium on the most common myths that managers hold about sexual harrassment… myths that could cost your company millions.

Heartless Charter

Charter Communications no doubt thought it was doing employees a favor by allowing them to use a company vehicle to commute from home to work and back. But the strings it attached ended up costing it almost $30-million dollars in a legal settlement.

Employees who got the company cars alleged the strings constituted working “off the clock” – and they sued.

Here’s the full story from The Madison, WI, Capital Times.

Personal Internet Use At Work

It’s a fine line between work browsing and personal browsing, and a very difficult line for employers to police.

The Birmingham, AL, Business Journal has an interesting look at how employers and employees are coping with all this grey area.

Child Labor Charges Filed Against Iowa Employer

The northeast Iowa meat packing plant that was the scene of America’s largest immigration raid on an employer a month or two back has now found itself on the receiving end of child labor charges filed by the Iowa Attorney General.

Here’s the full story from Time.

If I Recruit You, I’ll Have To Kill You

So-called “rogue recruiters” don’t often tell their story – but one did, to the Wall Street Journal.

The executive recruiter, wearing a hairnet and an apron, finally got a customer to tell him what he needed to know: the identity of a technology guru a client had hired Mr. Perry to poach from a competitor.

Mr. Perry’s client didn’t know this person’s name. So for days, the recruiter had been asking every coffee, cigarette and sandwich buyer who the “genius” was behind the large, publicly traded company’s top-selling piece of software. Finally, an unsuspecting patron spilled the beans, and Mr. Perry got his man. “It was real hard detective work, but it was fun,” he says.

Keep Your HR Health

Avoid “Just-Hire-Anybody-itus” with these tips for keeping yourself together when you’re desperate for new employees.

Politics, religion and work…

Trial lawyer John Palter has penned this article for the Dallas Business Journal warning employers that it’s best to keep a politics-free environment around the workplace.

Healthcare Costs: No Breaks For Small Business

The Wall Street Journal reports on a new study from Mercer Consulting & Outsourcing – while overall health care costs are expected to rise at the slowest pace in several years, they’re still going up fast for the small business end of the market.