Employee Rights

Ruth Thomas' executive position with Alpha Beta disappeared in a corporate reshuffle. Virginia Rulon-Miller lost her job with IBM because she was dating an employee of a rival firm. Michael E. Gray was fired for writing a rebuttal to a performance review on company time. Daniel Foley was replaced for "performance reasons" after he inquired about rumors that his boss was suspected of embezzlement. All of them sued, and their cases have become pieces of a growing legal jigsaw puzzle.

After a marked decline in its output of decisions, the state Supreme Court is shifting into high gear this week to tackle a heavy load of cases that will result soon in a wide range of important rulings. On Tuesday, the justices will begin hearing arguments on 20 cases in a four-day session in Los Angeles. Their full calendar seems to signal that the court--which has been struggling with rapid turnover within its ranks, an unyielding death-penalty backlog and other burdens--is back on track.

In an unusual case involving free speech and employee rights on the Internet, the Orange County Register obtained from America Online the name of an employee of the newspaper who operated a Web site that was critical of the Santa Ana publication. The Internet site, run by an AOL subscriber who goes by the name Slave4OCR, has since been shut down. It housed a collection of rumors, gossip and complaints by fellow workers at the newspaper.

Q: I work as a cashier at a convenience store. Recently, my boss informed me that out of $1,400 dropped in the safe by me in amounts of $100 each, only $1,300 was received by the bank. As a result, I've been suspended. I have seen three of my co-workers fired for this same thing. Once the money is dropped in the safe, it is out of my control. The money is picked up by an armored truck. This whole thing has caused me great mental strain. I know that I did not take the money.

Reflecting strong concerns about employee privacy rights, a survey released Thursday shows that a vast majority of workers object to psychological tests and other efforts by their companies to pry into their personal lives. The national poll of 1,000 employees conducted by Louis Harris & Associates found that 69% oppose psychological exams that measure attitudes and social preferences, a form of testing that many employers use with job applicants.

There is an unmistakable dignity in 45-year-old Geneva Moore. But there is little dignity, she thinks, in the work she does for 20 hours a week to assure the receipt of a $109 welfare check every two weeks and $151 in food stamps once a month. Moore, a mother of three and a welfare recipient since 1991, presides with broom and dustpan over the shabby back lot of the Murphy Consolidated Public Housing complex in the Bronx, New York City's poorest borough.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge John E. Ryan approved a compromise Thursday that requires Orange County to respect employee seniority rights in layoffs resulting from its financial crisis but limits the appeal process for anyone who loses a job. The agreement between the county and 10 unions that represent 16,000 employees requires the rehiring of 30 to 40 employees who were laid off in January, attorneys and union representatives said.

When labor negotiations heat up, federal safety inspectors often see a surge of complaints from workers. But well over half of complaints from union shops turn up no serious safety hazards, and more than a third of the time inspectors find no violations at all, Occupational Safety and Health Administration records show.

Back in the late 1980s, Tony Wong got into a dispute with his bosses at a Los Angeles insurance firm because he liked to speak Cantonese with co-workers who also spoke the language. The company eventually imposed an "English-only" rule in his department, Wong said, because management apparently was "paranoid" that employees speaking in foreign languages were talking about them. Today, however, the foreign language skills Wong acquired while growing up in the San Francisco area are a major plus.