If you call your employment lawyer and tell her that you want to terminate an employee for performance issues, one of the first questions will be “What documentation do you have?” Recently, the Seventh Circuit confirmed just how crucial documentation can be when defending an employment lawsuit. In Rozumalski v. W.F. Baird and Associates, decided August […]
On Friday, July 6, 2018, the Wisconsin Supreme Court determined that Marquette University had breached its contract with tenured professor John McAdams when it suspended him for discretionary cause after he authored a controversial blog post. McAdams claimed that the blog post fell within his rights to protected speech and academic freedom, whereas the University […]
This week, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals issued an important ruling on what “substantial fault” means in the context of unemployment compensation. In 2013, the Wisconsin legislature amended the unemployment insurance statutes to state that, in addition to discharge for misconduct and voluntary termination of work, employees would be denied unemployment benefits if they were […]
Under the Family Medical Leave Act, employers are not permitted to take an employee’s FMLA-protected absences into consideration when making employment decisions such as discipline and termination. However, if performance deficiencies are discovered while an employee is on FMLA leave and would have resulted in termination or discipline had the employee not been on leave, […]
On April 8, 2014, Governor Scott Walker signed into law the Wisconsin Social Media Protection Act (the “Act”). 2013 Wisconsin Act 208. The new law, which went into effect on April 10, 2014, Wis. Stat. § 995.55, prohibits employers from requesting an employee or an applicant to grant access to, allow observation of, or disclose […]
As “e-cigarettes” grow in popularity, employers must decide how to address the use of e-cigarettes in the workplace. Electronic cigarettes or “e-cigarettes” are battery-operated devices that deliver nicotine or other substances to its user in the form of a vapor that is then inhaled. Many e-cigarettes are manufactured to look just like everyday objects that […]
Wisconsin may soon join fourteen other states that have adopted laws prohibiting employers from requesting usernames and passwords to access an employee’s or job applicant’s social media accounts, including Facebook® and Twitter®. On Tuesday, August 20, 2013, the Wisconsin Senate Committee on Judiciary and Labor held a public hearing to discuss a bipartisan bill that […]
