Free Republic

LIMA (Reuters) - Peru's top court has ruled that workers cannot be fired for being drunk on the job, a decision that was criticized by the government on Wednesday for setting a dangerous precedent. The Constitutional Tribunal ordered that Pablo Cayo be given his job back as a janitor for the municipality of Chorrillos, which fired him for being intoxicated at work. The firing was excessive because even though Cayo was drunk, he did not offend or hurt anybody, Fernando Calle, one of the justices, said on Wednesday.

A federal judge has dealt a major defeat to Florida's business lobby by upholding the main thrust of a new law allowing employees with concealed weapons permits to take their guns to work. The so called "guns-at-work" law was the product of a three-year constitutional clash that pitted the powerful National Rifle Association against equally influential business groups over two basic constitutional concepts: the right of private property and the right to bear arms.

Walt Disney World fired a security guard on Monday after he protested the company's decision not to allow people with concealed weapons permits to keep guns in their cars on Disney property. Disney terminated Edwin Sotomayor, 36, of Orlando for violating three Disney employee policies, essentially for failing to cooperate with an internal investigation, said spokeswoman Zoraya Suarez. Sotomayor vowed to continue his fight. At issue is Florida's new law that allows people with concealed weapons permits to keep firearms in their vehicles in employee parking lots. Disney advised its employees late last month that the theme-park resort is exempt...

Bobby Jindal signs bill giving employees the right to have firearms in their automobiles "on company property".

It seems too lunatic to be true. But here a hair salon boss reveals how she was driven to the brink of ruin - and forced to pay £4,000 for 'hurt feelings' - after refusing to hire a Muslim stylist who wouldn't show her hair at work For Sarah Desrosiers, meeting Bushra Noah was not a moment in her life that she would describe as especially memorable. Not only was it brief - lasting little more than ten minutes - but it was rapidly obvious to Sarah that Bushra was not the person for the junior stylist position she was...

SAN FRANCISCO -- An employer has no right to read an employee's text messages without the worker's knowledge and consent, and federal law bars service providers from turning over the contents of the messages to the employer who pays for the service, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today. The court's unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel stemmed from a lawsuit by Ontario Police Sgt. Jeff Quon and three others against the city's service provider and the city and Police Department for violating his constitutional right to be free of unreasonable searches. Although the city had informed employees...

Howard Weyers tried the "carrot" approach by giving his employees incentives and encouragement to quit smoking. But when that didn't work, he resorted to the stick. A big stick. Weyers, owner of a health care benefits administrator in Lansing, Mich., gave his 200 employees an ultimatum in 2004: Quit smoking in 15 months or lose your job. He refused to hire smokers. Ultimately, he extended his smoking ban to employees' spouses and monitored compliance through mandatory random blood testing. Weyers' method, while effective, wouldn't fly in California because the state has laws that prohibit employers from making hiring or firing...

The workplace is becoming friendlier for gay and transgender employees, according to a report released today by the Human Rights Campaign, a national advocacy group. According to the report, "The State of the Workplace for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Americans 2004," at least 8,250 employers provided domestic partner benefits at the end of 2004, a 13 percent increase over the previous year. Among the Fortune 500, 216 companies provided domestic partner benefits, 10 times the number in 1995, when 21 of the companies offered the benefits. "As we suspected, corporate America is well ahead of America generally in terms...

The job candidate interviewing to be a terrorism research analyst at the Library of Congress seemed to have exceptional qualifications: a 25-year Army veteran and former Special Forces commander who spent a career hunting terrorists and often personally briefed the vice president, defense secretary or Joint Chiefs of Staff on sensitive operations. The interviews and salary talks went well for David Schroer. A job offer followed, and he accepted. Then the new employee brought up one last item: Once work began, the name would be Diane, not David.

Suppose you could eliminate the factors often blamed for the shortage of women in high-paying jobs. Suppose that promotions and raises did not depend on pleasing sexist male bosses or putting in long nights and weekends away from home. Would women make as much as men? Economists recently tried to find out in an experiment in Pittsburgh by paying men and women to add up five numbers in their heads. At first they worked individually, doing as many sums as they could in five minutes and receiving 50 cents for each correct answer. Then they competed in four-person tournaments, with...

DETROIT -- A jury awarded $10.6 million to one-time radio host who was fired after complaining a co-worker's perfume made her sick. Erin Weber said WYCD-FM fired her in 2001 after she complained she was allergic to another host's perfume. She said the station owner, Infinity Broadcasting Inc., discriminated against her for a disability — allergies — and retaliated after she filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Apple has been sued by a former employee for alleged discrimination. Shaune Patterson says that she was wrongfully terminated from the company because she was a Lesbian. Formerly employed by Apple as a human resources compensation consultant, she has filed suite in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco. The amended complaint, filed on May 16, 2005, alleges that Shaune Patterson was suspended for one month and then subsequently wrongfully terminated from her position, after she complained that her white counterparts, who were junior to her, were making higher salaries than she was....

DENVER (AP) - Ross Hopkins still likes to drink Bud, even though he says a brief tryst with a Coors beer cost him his job at a Budweiser distributor. Hopkins, 41, is suing American Eagle Distributing Co., saying the company wrongly fired him for drinking Coors in a bar two years ago. "They flat-out told me: 'We're putting food on your table so you could put it on theirs?"' he said Tuesday. "I thought I could drink it, no problem." Hopkins' lawsuit, filed in a Greeley, Colo., court, seeks unspecified damages for lost wages and benefits. No trial date has...

Man Fired By Bud Distributor For Drinking Coors Sip Of Coors Costs Man Job At American Eagle Distributing Company POSTED: 6:38 am MDT May 17, 2005 UPDATED: 7:23 am MDT May 17, 2005 MILLIKEN, Colo. -- A former employee of a Budweiser distributor said a sip of Coors cost him his job. Ross Hopkins, 41, said he was fired as a supervisor at American Eagle Distributing Company after he was seen by the son-in-law of the company president with a Coors at a Greeley bar. His apparent disloyalty led to his dismissal two days later. And now Hopkins is suing...

Companies look to save on insurance

NEW YORK (AP) -- Employers are catching more workers using methamphetamine, but the drug’s spread into the workplace appears to have slowed considerably, a new study finds. Employers who screen job applicants and workers for drugs saw the number testing positive for amphetamines increase by 6 percent last year. Positive tests for methamphetamine, one of two stimulants in that class of drugs, increased by 3 percent, according to a report to be released Monday by Quest Diagnostics Inc. The figures are based on the results of 7.2 million workplace drug tests conducted in 2004 by Teterboro, N.J.-based Quest, one of...

Firing Smokers - Reading Beyond the Headlines Trend: You smoke? You're fired!May 11, 2005 By Stephanie Armour More companies are taking action against employees who smoke off-duty, and, in an extreme trend that some call troubling, some are now firing or banning the hiring of workers who light up even on their own time.The outright bans raise new questions about how far companies can go in regulating workers' behavior when they are off the clock. The crackdown is coming in part as a way to curb soaring health care costs, but critics say companies are violating workers' privacy rights....

BERRIEN SPRINGS -- At a meeting last week with school officials, Christine John was congratulated on her March marriage, John says. Then, said the first-year kindergarten teacher at the Village Seventh-day Adventist Elementary School, she was asked why she was four months along in her pregnancy when she had been married just two months before. John said the meeting ended when she was told her services were no longer necessary. In a statement prepared by the Niles-based Edwin Bertram agency, she said she wasn't allowed to retrieve her belongings or return to the school during regular school hours. "I was...

TROY, Mich. (AP) — Delphi Corp., intent on containing costs in tough times, is cracking down on absenteeism by threatening to withhold pay or vacation days from hourly employees who refuse to sign waivers releasing their medical records. The Troy-based automotive supplier had had a less formal policy asking workers to sign medical record releases. In April, however, Delphi revised the waiver form to give employees fewer choices over what records are released and by more aggressively investigating absences it considers suspicious. "If the employee will not sign the `consent to release medical information' form, management will have to make...

KOKOMO, Ind. -- Workers at DaimlerChrysler's Indiana Transmission Plants I and II better allow more time for parking if they drive Fords or General Motors vehicles. A new policy that took effect Monday designates about 80 percent of employee parking spaces at the plants for Chrysler vehicles only. It forces workers to park much farther away if they drive a car or truck made by a competing manufacturer. Workers have been told that non-Chrysler vehicles parked in the reserved areas will be towed to Indianapolis at a cost of $200. A Chrysler spokesman saud most Chrysler plants across the country...