Legal Process Paper
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Employment laws come from federal, state, and local government sources. Their application depends on factors such as how many people are employed in a given organization, the number of employees in each location, and the minimum number of employees specified in the employment law statute.
For example, as of 2005, federal laws such as Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act apply to private employers, employment agencies, educational institutions, and state and local governments with at least 15 employees. Another federal law, like the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, applies to private employers with at least 20 employees. The federal Equal Pay Act applies to all employers who are subject to the federal Fair Labor and Standards Act (FLSA), which applies to almost all employers. State discrimination laws have their own eligibility requirements.
For instance, in California, the Fair Employment and Housing Act apply to employers who regularly employ more than five persons, with some exceptions for religious and non-profit organizations. The California Family Rights Act applies to employers who do business in California and employ 50 or more full-time or part-time employees. Californias wage and hour laws apply to virtually all employers and different rules are applicable depending on the employers industry.
Some localities have living wage requirements for employers who have contract with the local government. On the other hand, dome localities have minimum wage requirements regardless of whether the employer has a local government contract. In other localities, like New York City, have their own discrimination laws that apply to employers of a certain size. Employers cannot pick and choose which laws to follow, even if they overlap. They must comply with all federal, state, and local laws that are applicable, even if the laws have different legal standards for regulating behavior in the workplace. Sometimes, that means employers need to combine the laws and apply the provisions of each that are the most favorable to the employees. As a result, employers must be certain that employee handbooks and other published policies are appropriately written based on the laws applicable to the different jurisdictions in which they are used.
Organizations based on several states face particular challenges because it must also be determined whether to apply the federal, state, and local laws specific to each location or whether to combine the laws of all the jurisdictions and apply them uniformly across the board. Alternatively, an employer may decide to write policies that apply a combination of the laws in every location while writing other policies more narrowly. For example, it could be very expensive for an employer to apply daily overtime standards in every state in which it has employees instead of only in those where it is required.
In contrast, it may be easier and more consistent with the corporate culture to apply the broader protections of some state and local discrimination laws in all locations in which a company does business. The federal government and most states have informative Web sites intended to help the employers as well as the employees to figure out which laws apply.
Complicating matters even further, employers based in the United States and employers based outside the United States that operate in the United States also are covered by some of the laws. For example, employers that are incorporated or based in the U.S. or are controlled by U.S. companies and that employ U.S. citizens outside the