The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued yesterday its draft Strategic Enforcement Plan. If you don't have time to slog through all the introductory material, you won't miss a thing if you skip right to Section III (Priorities). The agency proposes that its priorities will be

*Systemic discrimination cases involving recruitment and hiring. No big surprise there ...

That is not a typo. Watch out for the "M" word if you don't want to be accused of harassment based on race, national origin, or color.

The "M" word is "monkey."

Now me, if I were to associate a human being with "monkey," it would be the white guy Joe E. Brown. And who can forget all the monkey-related grief poor, white George W. Bush got? However, the term "monkey" is included on Wikipedia's list of ...

What should an employer do about "anonymous harassment"?

Last Friday, I said I'd devote an entire post to a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit* that didn't take too kindly to Chrysler Corporation's response to complaints from an employee about anti-Semitic and national-origin-based notes and graffiti.

*The Seventh Circuit hears appeals from federal ...

If we don't laugh, we'll cry, right? In honor of Phyllis Diller, the queen of the one-liners, who died this week, and her counterpart, the great Henny Youngman, here is the latest labor and employment news - all in one-liners, of course.

"A bachelor is a guy who never made the same mistake once."

"Take my federal agencies -- please!" The National Labor Relations Board has taken the position ...

"Love means having to say you're sorry." Wait a minute. Is that a typo? 

No. Erich Segal, I beg to differ. As anyone who has a life knows, love means having to say you're sorry a lot. And that goes for employers, too. The company apology is a fine thing, as long as it is sincere, not a "non-apology apology," and accompanied by what they call a "firm purpose of amendment."

If you don't apologize when ...

Giddyap! It's been a short week, but we have tons to talk about in the labor and employment law world!

Thinking out loud about the impact of yesterday's DOMA decision on the Family and Medical Leave Act. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit* held yesterday that Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional. Section 3 provides that, for purposes of ...

How many readers knew it was illegal to discriminate against white people . . . or guys?

The reason I ask is that we had a decision this week from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which hears appeals from federal courts in the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. A majority-African-American school board was found by a jury to have ...

UPDATE: Daniel Schwartz of Connecticut Employer Law Blog has made some excellent additions to the list below. We could go on like this all day! Check it out.

My friend and employee/plaintiff's lawyer, Lee Smith of Atlanta (who does not have a web page, and who neither blogs nor tweets!), has been corresponding with me about the words that no employee's lawyer ever wants to hear from a ...

A cornucopia of random employment law issues for your long weekend.

Lessons for employers from the Natalie Wood investigation. (OK, I admit this is a shameless tie-in designed to get you to read a legal blog over a holiday weekend.) But the reopening of the Natalie Wood drowning investigation after 30 years does contain a good lesson for employers -- to wit, that no matter how much time has ...

Over the next 8 business days, I'll have a series of short posts addressing common questions that employers have about the law. If there is an "FAQ" that you would like for me to address, please let me know in the comments box.

I may also have more in-depth postings as circumstances warrant.

Employer FAQ No. 4: Should I offer harassment training to rank-and-file employees? Isn't that just ...