Employee Rights

Missouri employees may be interested to learn of a neighboring state’s Jesuit university’s decision to start providing healthcare benefits to spouses of their gay employees. Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, will begin to recognize the marriages of gay couples in states where such marriages are legal, paving the way for their spouses to become eligible for health plan benefits at…

Missouri residents may be interested to learn what the main differences are between employees and independent contractors under the law. The biggest difference is control. For the most part, employers are entitled to control their employees under the terms and conditions of their employment. This does not apply to independent contractors, although those companies that hire the ICs are in…

It may be hard to believe that some three decades after the HIV/AIDS crisis became a nationwide scourge, people who have the HIV virus still face discrimination and harassment due to the ignorance and prejudices of others. However, as the more than 1 million people in this country with HIV and AIDS know all too well, disclosure of their condition…

Kansas City workers scored a small but significant victory recently. The National Labor Relations Board’s three-member panel ruled that a local barbecue restaurant used an unfair labor practice against its employees who joined in a one-day strike during the summer of 2013. According to a complaint that the Workers’ Organizing Committee filed on behalf of the workers, approximately a fourth…

Those employees in Missouri who are covered by the National Labor Relations Act have specific rights to unite their efforts to improve the working conditions and wages at their place of employment, regardless of whether they have a union working on their behalf. Workers who have no union also possess the right to organize a union. Employees may also decertify…

Most Missouri workers understand that their employers have the right to screen for and fire employees who are using illegal drugs. But what happens when an employee is taking legally prescribed drugs for legitimate conditions? Do employers have a right to know or even ask? What are the employees’ rights in these situations? While there are state and federal statutes…

Missouri construction workers build our homes, roads, job sites and offices while also repairing and maintaining our state’s underlying infrastructure. The work can be hazardous and expose workers to dangerous conditions such as extreme temperatures, overwhelming noise, dizzying heights and deep excavation pits. Despite choosing a field that is often fraught with danger, construction workers still have employee rights that…

Some Missouri workers are entitled to the provisions of the Family and Medical Leave Act. Below are some questions and answers about its eligibility criteria and how it applies. Who are the covered employers? To be required to provide its employees with FMLA coverage, a business must be: — a public agency, which includes federal, state and local governmental agencies,…

One Kansas City fast-food employee emerged as a leader in last year’s protest to raise the minimum wage for the nation’s lowest paid workers; this year he traveled to Las Vegas to give an address to the NAACP at their annual national convention. His message is one that is beginning to reverberate among those in the employee rights movement: Increasing…

The slide down the slippery slope has begun and was signaled by the recent ruling by the Supreme Court that allows profit-earning corporations religious exemptions from provisions of the Affordable Care Act they find offensive to their religious beliefs. But the blow to employee rights in Missouri and elsewhere is far more severe than was immediately apparent. As the majority…