Can you bench press your weight? Some police departments in this country ask applicants to do this. This, among other physical aptitude tests, often keeps women out of the running.

A recent Justice Department lawsuit against a Texas police department claims such tests discriminate against women.

The government case against the city of Corpus Christi, Texas

“Challenges the police department’s use of a physical ability test for the hiring of entry-level police officers. According to the complaint, the physical test used by the city between 2005 and 2011 had the effect of excluding qualified women from consideration for hire as entry-level police officers and did not screen candidates for job-related skills.”

Cases like this get a lot of anger on both sides. Do we want our cops to be as strong as possible to fight crime, or have we created tests that have nothing to do with the job of policing, and keep out qualified applicants? (more…)

It’s a question that comes up often and it came up yet again yesterday: “Can an employer ask a job candidate how old they are?”

A colleague of mine at MSNBC.com, economy reporter Allison Linn, got this type of question from a reader on Facebook and we both pondered whether it was legal or not.

My gut feeling was this was a no no under the nation’s labor laws, but it turns out it’s not that cut and dry. (more…)

If women stopped getting pregnant the world would eventually cease to exist. So why is it so hard to get equal rights for the pregos among us already?

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act was signed into law in 1978 but it seems that wasn’t enough to stop employers from discriminating against pregnant workers.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charges of pregnancy bias have been hovering at the 6,000 mark since 2007.

“A few employers have forgotten, or never learned, that it’s against the law to discriminate against women because of pregnancy,” David Lopez, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s general counsel, told me earlier this year during a public meeting about the problem.

So, what to do? What about yet another law? (more…)

You have to wonder how many employees in this country are being screwed out of the pay they’re owned when major corporations with fleets of labor lawyers keep thwarting the law.

On Monday, the Department of Labor announced yet another settlement, this time with mega retailers Wal-Mart, involving unpaid overtime and the misclassification of workers.

This wasn’t just a handful of workers who weren’t paid what they were owed. We’re talking 4,500 across the country. And this comes a year after a $40 million plus settlement for Wal-Mart stemming from charges it didn’t give workers appropriate meal breaks and pay.

I’m glad Wal-mart agrees to pay back wages when caught — the latest to the tune of nearly $5 million — but you’ve got to scratch your head over how this happens.

Office supply giant Staples also settled similar charges of misclassifying workers last year.

Is this just corruption by companies trying to make an even bigger profit, or did someone just not get the memo on how the nation’s labor laws work? (more…)

UPDATE BELOW

Some job seekers who thought they had their criminal records sealed or believe arrest records won’t show up in a background check are often in for a rude awakening.

Turns out FBI data bases, and other public and private sources of information, can still turn up past missteps you thought weren’t in the public sphere, said Samuel Miller, a labor law attorney.

“A quarter of U.S. population has some record in FBI data base, and a large number may be situations where someone got fingerprinted or held in jail for a few hours but never got prosecuted,” he said.

Today, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is holding a meeting in Washington where it will announce new guidelines for the use of using criminal background checks in employment, and what they propose could help some workers. But the issue of bogus information, or information that was supposed to be out of the public’s eye for ever, may be hard to resolve. (more…)

Derrick Morgan, who has cerebral palsy, worked as a manager for a California McDonald’s since 2006 but when new management took over things changed drastically for him.

According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission the new owners of the Oakhurst restaurant, Alia Corp., illegally demoted Morgan and forced him the quit.

“This is a case where the company illegally stripped a well-qualified worker of his ability to earn a living due to misperceptions about his disability,” said Anna Park, regional attorney for the EEOC’s Los Angeles District Office.

Clearly there’s a problem in this country when it comes to employing individuals with disabilities. The unemployment rate for this group in March was 15.2 percent, almost double to the 8.1 percent rate for those without disabilities. And some experts have told me they suspect the joblessness among those with disabilities is much higher because many leave the labor force out of frustration.

And charges of disability discrimination filed with the EEOC have been rising steadily for the last decades, hitting a record 25,742 last year.

Morgan’s case goes to show that some employers are cool with employing disabled workers and some just don’t get it. Indeed, he was a valued employee to the previous owner.

It turns out there is a recipe that works when recruiting, hiring and keeping disabled workers, and a recent study sheds light on that approach. (more…)

I’ve been covering labor issues for a long time but yesterday I realized how much I still have to learn about worker rights.

I wrote a story about a gay man who claims he was fired from the Library of Congress after his employer found out his was gay, and during the research of the story I came across a disturbing reality. If indeed they fired this guy because he was gay, he has little to no recourse to fight the action.

Why? Because sexual orientation is largely not a protected category in the workplace, either the government workplace or the private sector. I knew their rights were limited, but I didn’t realize how limited. The lawyer in the Library of Congress’ case said he’s going to fight the case based on religious discrimination, which is clearly covered under labor laws, but he’s not going to push the sexual orientation issue because it would get his client no remedy for the injustice he alleges.

Since the Library of Congress is part of the federal government I found this even more shocking because that would mean the government can basically discriminate against gay workers.

When I asked a spokeswoman at the library about the case, she offered this in a statement:

“Library of Congress employees, like all employees in the federal government, have protection against workplace discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.”

Well folks, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not cover sexual orientation. It only “prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.”

When I got off the phone I called one of the top labor law firms that focuses on government workers, Tully Rinckey, to find out for sure what rights gay workers had. Alas, the news was grim for government and private sector employees. (more…)

I had a dream last night that IBM CEO Virginia Rometty told the Grand Poobah of the Masters Tournament to take his green blazer and shove it.

You see the golf tournament, considered the most prestigious in the country, is held at the Augusta National Golf Club and guess what, that club doesn’t accept female members.This is a tough situation for the Club and for Rometty because traditionally IBM’s top dog has been accepted into the club and ends up wearing the organization’s famous green blazer.

All four of the last IBM CEOs were offered membership, according to a Wall Street Journal article today. But the newly minted chief executive Rometty won’t be able to don it because breasts are not allowed.

Rometty isn’t commenting on the matter, and word is she’ll be attending since IBM is one of the event’s key sponsors, but here’s where the few women in power can make a difference. Instead of attending and faking a smile, she should pull the company’s long-time sponsorship and tell Masters “you’re not the master of me anymore.” (more…)

There have been undercurrents of weight discrimination in the workplace for years, but a Texas hospital decided to go anti-fat full throttle.

A Texas newspaper uncovered the story recently reporting about a fat-adverse Texas hospital — Citizens Medical Center — and it’s unheard of policy of refusing to hire anyone with a body mass index of more than 35.

The policy, according to The Texas Tribune, states:

… an employee’s physique “should fit with a representational image or specific mental projection of the job of a healthcare professional,” including an appearance “free from distraction” for hospital patients.

“The majority of our patients are over 65, and they have expectations that cannot be ignored in terms of personal appearance,” hospital chief executive David Brown said in an interview. “We have the ability as an employer to characterize our process and to have a policy that says what’s best for our business and for our patients.”

The hospital’s policy may cause outrage, but it’s an extreme example of an obesity bias that has been percolating in the nation’s workforces, starting with seemingly benign measures such as encouraging workers to walk at lunch. (more…)

There’s been a lot of talk in recent days that the Supreme Court may strike down health care reform, but killing the law in its entirety will hurt working mothers across the country.

Tucked into reform was a new provision known as the Breast Feeding Act and it’s already helping to make breast-feeding at work easier.

The Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law in March 2010, amended the Fair Labor Standards Act, and for the first time employers are now federally mandated to provide women with breaks and a place to breastfeed. The final rules regarding the law have not been finalized, but that hasn’t stopped the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour division’s enforcers from going after employers who don’t make accommodations for working moms who want to pump.

This one provision in the law was among the few that got bipartisan support and it would clearly turn back the clock on a key advancement for women in the workplace if it went down with the health-reform ship.

How are the justices on the high court leaning? There was one mention by a justice I found from the recent hearing about the act. (more…)