Labor & Employment Developments Blog

I know I just posted about the NFL but they keep doing things that are instructive to those of us with an interest in employment law.  During last week’s games, an unusual number of players were injured by blows to the head.  As a result, some fines were levied, including one to a Steelers player named James Harrison.

I ran across an article in the USA Today entitled “What did Brett Favre do wrong? Legal experts uncertain.”  For those of you who don’t follow football, Favre allegedly made advances toward a female employee of the New York Jets football team when he was a member of the Jets.  The advances included messages on Myspace, voice messages and x-rated photos allegedly e-mailed or texted by Favre.  Bearing in mind that I have no information apart from what has been reported in the media, this situation does not really seem that mysterious to me.

According to the latest news, jobs have dropped by another 95,000 in the past month and unemployment continues to hover at 9.6%.  In short, things do not appear to be improving and it is likely that we will continue to see workforce reductions until they do.

I read an interesting post this week at the HR Observations blog that addressed what to do when the victim of alleged harassment is a human resources employee.  In considering how to craft a harassment policy that would provide a solution for the HR/victim scenario, the suggestions centered on involving an outside investigator in the process.  Possible outsiders included: a member of the Board of Directors; an outside employment attorney; or an HR consultant.