Employee rights are protected to ensure that no person is discriminated against, but what about employer rights? When rules and regulations are put in place or enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, OSHA, or other government agencies, the regulations need to protect not only employee rights but employer rights as well. Employment Law attorneys in Houston can protect and defend an employer's rights against unfair, false or exaggerated OSHA citations, employee discrimination lawsuits, and wrongful termination accusations.
An online hiring application process by Dish Network has come under fire recently. The EEOC has filed a case with a federal court to investigate Dish Network's online hiring process. The EEOC's investigation will be to determine if the online application discriminates against disabled persons.
The investigation was initiated after an applicant, who suffers from epilepsy and cannot work at night due to the increased risk of seizures, claimed that the application never questioned him about a disability or provided a place to request accommodations for his disability. He also said it terminated the process when he answered that he could not work all hours. Records have been subpoenaed from Dish Network by the EEOC detailing how their application process works and was developed. They also want to know how many applicants have completed the process, how many have been hired without completing the application, and how the information is stored and used, as well as other details.
Dish's response to the EEOC claimed that the applicants for the position were required to be available for any shift, and that was stated in the job description. They also claim that the applicant only spent three minutes on their site before being halted by the process, and he should have contacted them directly about the job opportunity after that, and he did not.
Some believe that the EEOC is setting precedence with this case and that it is unusual for them to not only issue subpoenas in an investigation but also to take a case to the federal court.
Source: denverpost.com, "Could Dish employee-rights case alter how online job applications are handled?" Andy Vuong, Dec. 20, 2013
