Situation A
The Family and Medical Leave Act was passed by former President Bill Clinton in 1993 as his first priority in his first year of office. This Act seeks to help employees find a balance in their work and family life to promote optimum psycho- social stability and optimum production levels. This is a federal law that comprises employers in America to offer qualified employees job security and unpaid leave on the event of household circumstances. The law qualifies a person if, the employee works for a company of more than 50 workers having worked for more than a year with 1250 hour service to the company for the last 12 months. The Act grants an employee 12 weeks leave maximum for every working year. The company can sue the employee if they extend. The company is given the right to hire a new employee to take over the position of the former employee if he or she extends the leave. It also dictates that the worker should be restored to the same working position when they return to work and protection of the employee benefits when they are on leave (Galinsky, 2008).
The Act grants leave for employees who have the following circumstances; they have a new child they have to take care of. This can also be either a new born or an adopted child. If the a family member is seriously ill such as a spouse, a child below 18 years, a mentally unstable child regardless of age or pregnancy conditions, the employee is legible for the leave. The worker is also granted leave if they undergo an accident or serious illness (Galinsky, 2008). The company is entitled to investigate the legibility of the leave through survey by qualified Human Resource personnel.
In this case scenario, the worker has worked for the company for two years. This makes him legible to apply for his leave and is eventually granted. In that, his right is exercised given a leave on the basis of having new born twins which serves as the legible reason for having the leave. On return after 11 weeks of his leave, he finds a new manager. In this case he has not breached his leave contact that seeks to issue only a 12 week leave in every working year. This does not change the terms of the leave and the contract still stands even with the change of the manager. The worker has his right of wanting his previous job back. The manager is entitled to give the worker his job back with the same position (Galinsky, 2008)
However the Family and Medical Leave Act clearly state that it cannot grant the worker their salary on the time of leave. The Act only offers permission to miss work to qualified employees on the capacity that they are given their jobs back upon return but not their salaries of the time duration they were on leave. Even if the employee takes legal action and sues the company, the company itself is shielded by the Act (Galinsky, 2008)
Situation B
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 is a federal law protecting employees above the age of 40 years from being discriminated in the job environment. This includes hiring, compensation, training and promotions to mention just a few. This Act is very wide even touching employment agencies that have been known to be age biased of older job applicants. It also hinders entailing age as job qualifications in job advertisements. The Act also states that executives over the age of 65 be given a retirement benefit pension scheme in a minimal yearly amount. The Act hinders companies from denying its older staff health benefits seeing them as a liability. This is because they have a higher risk of becoming ill most of the times. This means that they are paid yearly an agreed upon amount minimum to their previous salaries as pension (EEOCTAP, 1998).
In this case scenario, employee B being 68 years old, he is protected by the ADEA that seeks to protect people with age 40 and over. On the previous performance review done, the employee seems to have defeated a younger 32 year old worker. This means that employee B does very good work for the company than the younger worker. Therefore, employee B deserves all the credit be it promotion or rise in salary on a neutral platform (EEOCTAP, 1998).
On this event, employee B is denied a promotion on the basis of age and it is given to his young counterpart. In this scenario, the company has violated the rights of employee B through being biased because of his age. The employee is well versed with the company’s organization and culture and is clearly very well versed with the goals. His experienced with years adds up to the right credentials for the promotion but yet is denied on basis of age. The younger worker obviously does not produce better results for the company. Put on a level ground and using expertise personnel, the older employee performance speaks for itself. The company may not be willing to give the older person the promotion because of retirement benefits. The older person may retire soon and since he was given a promotion, his retirement benefits will have increased with the promotion which the company is unwilling to pay. The employee has a right to sue the company in which in most cases it will be a very heavy penalty for the company (EEOCTAP, 1998).
Situation C
Passed by former President George Bush in 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) seeks to protect the disabled especially the employed persons. Disability can be described as the situation of limitation whether physical or mental, that hinders an individual from operating normally as a normal human being. The Act protects disabled people from being taken advantage of in terms of hiring, trainings, promotions among other elements of rewards of work. Many companies see the disabled people as liabilities because of the extra attention and the using of more time to produce goods and services. This makes companies hinder the hiring of disabled through issuing of medical tests in their job applications and promotions (Corker, 1999).
In this situation, the employee has applied for all the 4 elevator keypads to be pushed two inches down from the original position. Being an employee already, the disabled employee is an important part in the company. The company has refuted to change the keypads just because it will cost the company an extra expenditure. The American Disabilities Act pushes for companies to enhance their services to ease the hardship of the disabled. Though many government offices have made changes to their structural premises making it easier for their disabled employees to work efficiently, private companies have not heeded to the sanction. In most cases, the management is entitled to perform a balancing test. This is a test undertaken by the company to weigh the undertaking of expenses to make ease of a disabled person in the company with the productivity of the individual. If the disabled is more productive to the company, then the company should make the effective changes to ensure that the disabled employee can move easily around the offices enhancing their productivity. The employee is therefore legible to sue the company if it does not make the changes to ease strain in performance of the employee (Fleischer, 2001).
WORKS CITED
Galinsky, E., Bond, J., Sakai, K., Kim, S., Giuntoli, N. (2008). National study of employers.
New York, NY: Families and Work Institute.
United States. (1998). Age discrimination: Employment discrimination prohibited by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, as amended. Washington, D.C.?: U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Technical Assistance Program.
Corker, M., & French, S. (1999). Disability discourse. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Fleischer, D. Z., & Zames, F. (2001). The disability rights movement: From charity to confrontation. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
