Category: Workplace Rights
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Sutter Roseville will pay $200,000 after refusing a nurse’s disability accommodation
A disability can change which tasks or work locations remain possible without ending a person’s ability to work. Sutter Roseville Medical Center has agreed to provide $200,000 in back pay and compensatory damages to a former staff nurse after a federal investigation found the hospital refused to consider reassignment to an open position and terminated…
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Bouchon and Thomas Keller Restaurant Group will pay $2 million to settle an EEOC harassment case
A workplace case at a celebrated Las Vegas restaurant ended with a dollar amount large enough to command attention and a compliance plan designed to change what happens after a worker complains. Bouchon and Thomas Keller Restaurant Group agreed to pay $2 million to resolve a federal harassment and retaliation lawsuit. The settlement does not…
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Unclaimed back wages go to the Treasury after three years
The Labor Department holds recovered back wages for three years before sending them to the U.S. Treasury. Here is how the Workers Owed Wages search works and what it requires.
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$2.6 million will go to women an Alabama recycling plant refused to hire as laborers, federal investigators said
Somewhere in Pell City, Alabama, and the towns around it, are women who applied for laborer work at a recycling plant and never heard back. By the federal government’s account, some of them were turned away as long ago as 2006, and the pattern ran until late 2022. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says…
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$105,000 went to a male surgical technician after a jury found two doctors barred him from most of his duties
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced on July 28 that it had won a jury verdict in the kind of case most people never picture the agency bringing. A federal jury in Fayetteville, Arkansas found that a hospital allowed two of its doctors to strip a male surgical technician of most of the work…
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DC Water will pay nearly $217,000 to settle claims it fired a worker over his age
The District of Columbia Water and Sewer Authority had written policies covering performance notification, progressive discipline and internal appeals. When it fired a member of its own human resources department in September 2023, federal regulators say it followed none of them. That gap between the rulebook and the firing became part of an age discrimination…
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Battelle Energy Alliance will pay $5 million to over 100 workers denied vaccine exemptions
More than 100 employees of an Idaho Falls engineering and research company asked to be excused from a mandatory COVID-19 vaccine policy. Some asked on the basis of a sincerely held religious belief. Others asked on the basis of a disability. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission found reasonable cause to believe those requests were unlawfully…
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The Labor Department’s wage tool lets workers search by employer for unclaimed back pay
The U.S. Labor Department may already be holding back wages for a worker it could not locate after an investigation. Its free Workers Owed Wages tool lets people search by current or former employer to see whether money connected to a Wage and Hour Division case may be waiting. This is narrower than a general…
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Five dealership workers will share $925,000 under a court-approved harassment and retaliation settlement
Five workers at three affiliated Austin car dealerships will share $925,000 under a federal court-approved settlement of sexual-harassment and retaliation claims. The money and the dealerships’ required workplace changes resolve the case before trial, so the alleged conduct should not be described as a final court finding. For employees elsewhere, the case is a reminder…
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Six deli workers received about $83,000 each after being paid $100 for 11-hour days
Six workers at a San Diego deli have now received roughly $83,000 apiece after a federal investigation found they were paid a flat $100 for days that often lasted 11 hours. The recovery shows how quickly unpaid minimum wages and overtime can grow when a pay practice continues week after week. The payment is specific…
