Churches, church schools and other religious institutions don’t always have to follow federal employment laws. That’s because religious entities are entitled to operate free of interference with their religious practices—if the employees in question are part of that religious practice.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has filed a complaint against Starbucks, claiming it fired a Grand Rapids barista because of his union sympathies.

Q. We have an employee who has a history of clashing with others at work. Her supervisors have addressed this with her many times. Recently, she sent an e-mail that was unprofessional and insulting to co-workers. If we fire her, could she successfully sue us for sex discrimination or harassment?

Employees who file a discrimination claim with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights within the one-year deadline set by the Minnesota Human Rights Act get an extension of time to file a lawsuit directly in court. That’s the conclusion recently reached by the Court of Appeals of Minnesota.

Employers sometimes come up with some very specific rules for when and how employees must call in to let their bosses know they will miss work. Sometimes those rules become contracts ...

Employees who claim their employers somehow discriminated against them because they have immigration problems or aren’t U.S. citizens can’t automatically sue for national-origin discrimination under the Minnesota Human Rights Act or Title VII. Instead, they must prove that the underlying discrimination was based on national origin.

If you have a zero-tolerance policy for employees drinking alcohol on duty, employees who are fired for breaking the rules may be denied unemployment compensation benefits—even if the employee wasn’t impaired enough to be criminally charged with drunken driving.

Erik Forman, a barista at a Minneapolis Starbucks who claimed he was fired in July for promoting a union drive, is pouring ventes again after the java giant settled a National Labor Relations Board complaint he filed.

Fairmont-based MowMar Farms has fired six workers at its newly acquired farm near Bayard, Iowa, after a videotape revealed that some employees routinely abused pigs there. The footage, shot by PETA, showed workers slamming piglets on a concrete floor...

Q. We have an employee in our manufacturing facility who has brought numerous workers’ compensation claims. This has cost us a lot of money. Do we have to continue to employ this person? His position involves a continued risk of physical injury.

Two former Neiman Marcus loss prevention investigators who were fired from Neiman Marcus in October 2007 for having sex on the job are suing the company for illegally videotaping them.

Marsha Bartel was an award-winning NBC journalist working on the “Dateline NBC” television show. NBC fired her, claiming it was laying off staff. She sued, alleging NBC had fired her for complaining that the show was not adhering to NBC’s internal ethical standards. The case offers some important reminders about how to handle termination of at-will employees.

Employees who take intermittent leave can wreak havoc with work schedules. Because their conditions can flare up at any time, their absences are by nature unpredictable. But there are ways you can legally curtail intermittent leave. One way is to use the calendar-year method to set FMLA leave eligibility.

Employees who suffer reprisals after complaining about possible discrimination or harassment can sue for retaliation. But they can do so only if they can show they “engaged in protected activity”—that is, that they told their employer about the alleged discrimination or harassment.

Over the past few years, the Florida Legislature has enacted a growing list of restrictions on who can come onto school property. One state law bars anyone convicted of child abuse from school premises.