Denver Employment Law Blog

A case pending before the Colorado Supreme Court currently has the potential to change the landscape of employment law in this state.

Interestingly, this case involves a man who himself worked in human resources for a public hospital. He described his position as one in which part of his job was to prevent employees from being unlawfully or improperly treated.

A previous post on this blog talked about how several well-known companies are facing allegations from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, that they engaged in discriminatory recruiting practices. The issue was that these employers either placed, or allowed, Facebook ads that were selectively shown both to people under 40 and to men.

There are in fact a number of ways employers in the Denver area can run into legal trouble in how they conduct their recruiting and hiring process. Likewise, employers also need to be careful when promoting employees internally, as an employer is not allowed to discriminate in the advancement of employees any more than in hiring and firing decisions.

The United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, recently filed formal allegations against several companies accusing them of unlawful targeted recruiting that, according to the allegations, was designed to discourage older workers, and in some cases women, from applying for certain positions.

According to some experts, this action represents the first time the EEOC has formally applied anti-discrimination laws to online targeted advertising, such as through Facebook. In this context, targeting advertising is the practice of using a social media platform, like Facebook, to make sure that certain groups of people see ads for open positions, while others do not see these ads.

There is nothing worse than feeling as if your employer is not paying you for the time you've been spending on the job. Whether it's a few missing hours of pay each week or paychecks that never seem to add up correctly, you may be confused and frustrated. The good news is that Colorado has steps in place to help you seek the compensation that you're owed from your employer. Employers who don't pay could be fined or penalized for their actions. Best of all, you may be able to stay out of court if you are owed $7,500 or less in wages.

The Colorado Wage Protection Act is making significant changes in how the state's wage and hour laws work. The Wage Protection Act was implemented in January 2015 and established a procedure to help adjudicate situations where there were unpaid wages of $7,500 or less per employee. The new act also increased the fines that employers could have imposed on them for making these errors in payments. The act also provides for attorneys' fees if the employees were paid less than minimum wage.