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With gas prices increasing, revenue declining and profit margins dwindling, many employers are taking a hard look at 2009 staffing. This may include combining positions, reducing staff by attrition, or laying workers off.

According to Sozeen Mondlin, associate general counsel with MITRE Corp, HR managers and employers should give careful consideration to choosing which employees to lay off.

“Given today’s economic climate, we all have to expect more activity in this area,” she said at the Association of Corporate Counsel annual conference in Seattle on October 19 to 21, 2008.

Mondlin said that employers are often sued by workers who (more…)

Former NASCAR official Mauricia Grant has filed a $225 million suit against the racing giant, citing multiple instances of racial and sexual harassment. Grant, who is a young African American female, specifies 23 incidents of sexual harassment and 34 incidents of racial and gender discrimination. She says that she documented all of them at the time on an Excel spreadsheet created by her sister.

Grant charges that she was the target of repeated and continued harassment, lewd jokes, racial remarks and unwanted sexual advances. Allegedly, two NASCAR officials exposed themselves to her. NASCAR has disciplined the two officials, but denies the charges. NASCAR representatives also contend that Grant willingly participated in most of the exchanges. If true, her complaints suggest that NASCAR lags behind most employers in enforcing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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