Just Management

Stray Comments Don’t Always Prove Age Bias Ms. Martin was a long-term, highly-valued employee of Lockheed Missiles & Space Company. In 1991, she was laid off as result of a stack ranking based on performance and seniority. She sued for age discrimination.

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Get Dates at Work and Don’t Get Sued

Antioch College is in the news because of its new “ask first” policy designed to prevent sexual harassment and date rape. Under the policy, a student must ask first before initiating any intimate contact. For example, a young man should ask a young woman, “Can I kiss you?” before kissing. If she says yes or

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A Free-Agent Outlook Can Hurt Your Career

In his book “Free Agent Nation” (Warner Books, 2001), Daniel H. Pink focused on the more than 30 million Americans who, for a variety of reasons, have abandoned traditional employment and the idea of a job that lasts a lifetime. The free-agency movement promotes the notion that — because the loyalty contract between employers and

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Age Bias Persists In Silicon Valley

In Silicon Valley these days, precious few jobs are available for high-tech workers. In the past two years, hundreds of companies have folded and tens of thousands of employees have been laid off. Many of the job hunters who came here in the late 1990s for the dot-com rush are gone.

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Offensive messages, e-mails: What’s safe for work?

The messages law enforcement personnel sent one another — more than 5,000 — were crude, referring to people as animals, using profane terms as labels — and, worst, containing some horrifying jokes implying violence. They were fired. That was in Camden County, N.J., where 11 white prison guards lost their jobs for racially insulting texts

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Is a College Degree Required to be Successful?

The proverbial dropout success stories: Zuckerberg, Jobs, Branson, Karp (who didn’t even graduate high school). A quick Google search and you’ll be inundated with lists from 3 to 99 of the top dropout-turned-millionaire names. But simple mention of their anomalistic success isn’t reason enough to abandon the centuries old chase of academic excellence. Rather, it’s

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Rex Huppke: The impact of workplace bullying

When it comes to workplace bullying, we often focus on the hammers and not the needles. Hammers are the obvious acts of oafish or even physically violent behavior, the situations where there’s little nuance and a person is clearly being victimized. Needles are the small, repetitive acts that often go unnoticed, and unreported, the needling

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