Employment Law and Labor Relations Issues Essay

Equal opportunity is a descriptive term for an approach think to bemuse equal access to an environment or benefits, such as education, employment, health c be, or societal welf are to all, often with emphasis on members of various well-disposed groups which might have at all(prenominal) meter suffered from discrimination. This burn involve the hiring of workers and another(prenominal) such practices. Social groupings generally show in such a way are those delineated by aspects of gender, race, or religion. In my workplace the Equal Employment Opportunity policy is posted on almost all wall in the building. on that point are several issues that need to be address in my workplace. I work for a not-for-profit authorisation contracted with the Florida Department of Children and Families. We are an agency that tries to help families reunite once they have entered into the Family Law system. My job as a genial worker is to promote social justice and social tilt with and on behalf of clients.Clients is used inclusively to refer to individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. Social workers are thin to cultural and ethnic diversity and strive to end discrimination, oppression, poverty, and other forms of social injustice. These activities may be in the form of direct practice, community organizing, supervision, consultation, administration, advocacy, social and political action, policy development and implementation, education, and research and evaluation. Social workers look for to parent the capacity of people to address their own needs. Social workers similarly seek to promote the responsiveness of organizations, communities, and other social institutions to individuals needs and social problems. The briny issue that needs to be addressed within my bon ton is some issues pertaining to the Fair Labor Standards Act, spend bear, and having an Human Resources Representative at our local site.I believe that my organization needs to take the time to apologise to its employees what their rights are and what the laws of the state require. The Human Resource department for our agency is pass on place of Bethesda, Maryland. So every issue and or concern has to go through them. Because of the distance, it is very hard and time consuming for local employees at this agency to get things done in a timely manner, so a lot of things that should be addressed at employee orientation are not addressed until maybe the third month of employment when the HR administrator decides to take a trip toFlorida. in that location are a lot of questions that we as employees have almost holiday pay practices and what are the well-grounded requirements.For example, I did not know that an employer is obligated to provide fair accommodation for the religious practices of its employees, unless it can show that the accommodation would result in undue hardship for its business. Many employers onwarder a drift holiday in addition to the regularly scheduled holi age. This allows an employee to take time off for religious observances that are not covered by the employers ceremonious holiday schedule. Courts addressing the issue of religious accommodation generally agree that volunteer(a) time off can be a reasonable accommodation, as can allowing an employee to use a vacation day to observe a religious holiday. Generally, employers require that floating holidays be taken in the kindred year they are granted and do not allow these days to be carried over into the next year. Employees usually are required to give adequate advance notice of their intention to take a floating holiday. I also did not know that an employer does not have to pay hourly employees for time off on a holiday. An employer is only required to pay hourly employees for time actually worked.On the other hand, ease employees (salaried employees who do not receive overtime), who are given the day off, must(prenominal)(prenominal) be paid the ir full weekly salary if they work any hours during the week in which the holiday falls. This requirement for exempt employees did not change under the new federal overtime regulations. Both of these statements can be very helpful when our employees what to take some time off or just to check to make sure they are treated fairly. There are a handful of labor laws that do generally cheer U.S. workers. Its probably fair to say that most employers adhere to these underlying laws, because theyd be foolish not to if they want to stay out of court.But, thats typically at the HR and legal-department levels, where the employees are properly educate in such matters. Companies are also made up of other employees, who might never have heard of labor laws or to the full understand their significance. Thats one way problems occur, especially if HR and legal departments dont bother to properly train those in control, like jerky bosses. Another way problems occur is that, for obvious legal re asons, HR and legal departments are unlikely to openly admit that employee complaints and accusations have merit, and the company isliable. Worse, they might even protect the perpetrators more than the victims.In conclusion, it is very definitive that companies keep their policies up-to-date and follow them. Written policies tell your employees how they can foresee to be treated and give you guidelines for applying the policies consistently. However, the policies must comply with legal requirements and you must follow them, or they may be used against you as cause of violations of the law. Having these problems addressed in my organization could help it many ways, starting with establishing a good relationship between upper management and current employees and also establishing a steady line of communication. But this issue cannot be addressed until a local Human Resources department is establish at every local office so if employees do have question about employment law or curre nt labor relation issues they can be addressed right then and there.