Employee Rights

Employees who cooperate with an internal investigation and report inappropriate behavior in the workplace are protected from retaliation under civil rights laws, the Supreme Court said Monday, strengthening the laws against sexual harassment on the job.

Reality TV producer FremantleMedia North America fired back at the Writers Guild of America, West, dismissing its "American Idol" Truth Tour as nothing more than a caravan of misinformation.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., known for its strong stance against workers unionizing, on Thursday closed a tire and lube center in Canada where workers had voted to organize. A Wal-Mart spokesman said the five workers and one manager at the center were offered jobs at comparable Wal-Mart facilities or elsewhere in the store, which is in Gatineau and has more than 250 workers. The store itself will remain open. The United Food and Commercial Workers union called the closure an attack on Wal-Mart workers.

For decades, California employers have griped about state laws governing overtime pay and lunch breaks, contending that they raise costs and darken the business climate. Now, their concerns have become a Republican bargaining chip in tough negotiations between the governor and lawmakers over how to fix a $14.8-billion hole in the state budget for the current fiscal year that threatens to shut down government by spring. Major business groups took their concerns to Gov.

Employers may stop their workers from fraternizing if it's for fun but not if it's to discuss working conditions, a U.S. appeals court ruled Friday. A three-judge panel found that an anti-fraternization policy of the security-services firm Guardsmark intruded into federal labor law that gives workers the right to organize and to "engage in other concerted activities."

A Senate committee voted to give airport screeners the collective-bargaining and whistle-blower rights that many other federal employees have. On a 9-8 party-line vote, Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee supported giving the screeners the right to join a union and to be protected from retaliation if they report wrongdoing.

A federal judge ruled Wednesday against International Creative Management's bid to block Richard Abate, its former high-profile literary agent, from jumping ship to rival Endeavor Talent Agency. In denying ICM's request for a preliminary injunction, U.S. District Judge Peter K. Leisure said the agency had not shown that it would be irreparably harmed by Abate's decision to join another company before his contract had expired.

China's government-backed trade union, long considered a paper tiger, is growing real fangs -- delighting worker advocates but making foreign executives sweat. Dismissed for years as a Communist Party mouthpiece and organizer of holiday parties, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions has started playing hardball, pushing for tougher labor protections and launching an aggressive campaign to organize foreign companies that have benefited from the country's large, low-cost labor pool.

Workers at a huge U.S.-owned copper and gold mine are on a sit-down strike demanding a greater role in management, which they say is discriminating against tribespeople in remote Papua province. Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., based in Phoenix, has been plagued for years by allegations of human rights abuses and environmental damage at its open-pit mine.

United Parcel Service Inc. will get a new hearing on whether the Atlanta-based company violated federal law by barring hearing-impaired employees from driving smaller trucks. A full panel of judges of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed to rehear the case. Last year a three-judge panel of the same court said that although UPS must exclude deaf people from driving vehicles weighing more than 10,000 pounds, in accordance with U.S.