Recently in Wages & Benefits Category

Most employers would love a hard-working employee who sacrifices her own needs and works through lunch to get the job done, right? Not quite. In this highly litigious age, an employee working through lunch may create more headaches for a company than any work she can possibly accomplish in a 30-minute period.

Sharon Smiley was fired from her job of ten years at a Chicago real estate company for working through lunch. There was nothing wrong with her termination, but an Illinois court found that the woman was entitled to unemployment benefits.

About 150 employees were laid off by Rolf’s Patisserie in Lincolnwood in December. They were given little to no notice that the company was shutting down. To make matters worse, many of these employees live paycheck-to-paycheck and found out that their final paychecks did not clear either.

These former workers are now seeking to band together in a class to bring a Rolf’s Patisserie lawsuit, reports the Chicago Tribune.

One of the great American traditions is watching the pomp and circumstance of the Academy Awards and seeing our favorite actors receive little gold men for their outstanding performances.

But due to a Chicago labor dispute, is there a chance the Academy could run out of statuettes when the show announces the best director, actor, or actress? Or worse yet, could “Made in China” be imprinted on the bottom of each Oscar?

This may be the most important employment post you ever read as we discuss Illinois wage payment laws and the laws that discuss when you must get paid and what must go in your paycheck.

When You Must Be Paid

Employers must generally pay you at least on a semi-monthly basis (twice a month). Employers can pay more frequently if they want, like on a weekly basis, but at a minimum, they must pay you at least twice a month.

In the first round of layoffs, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle sent out layoff notices to roughly 100 employees. The Cook County layoffs are hoped to help close a $315 million budget gap.

The union and county have been battling over the budget for some time. On the one hand, the county has asked employees to take unpaid furlough days. On the other, the union and its employees have bristled at the thought of any layoffs or furloughs. As a result, the county has been forced to terminate employees.

Last week, we wrote about a school teacher who successfully sued her schoold district for failing to give her time off to perform her pilgrimage to Mecca.

Now, another Muslim discrimination lawsuit has made the headlines. Hertz, the car rental company, allegedly fired 26 Muslim transport drivers in the Seattle area after the drivers chose to be terminated rather than clock out for prayer breaks, reports CBS. The drivers pray several times a day pursuant to their faith. While Hertz allowed the practice, the company wanted the drivers to clock out, which the drivers refused to do.

Fed up with chronic absenteeism that has caused the city to cut back on rodent control and tree-trimming services, Mayor Rahm Emanuel gathered 50 ward superintendents who oversee these crews and told them to crack down on absent employees.

But if an employee must miss work, can they be fired for absenteeism?

Earlier this year, the city has struggled to perform its duties of sweeping streets, collecting garbage, and trimming trees, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. This was likely due to the hiring freeze and also the staggering amount of absent city employees.

Men are paid more than women. There's nothing new in University of Notre Dame's newest study as many studies have already shown that men are routinely paid more than women for the same jobs. But the Notre Dame study also shows that jerks are paid more. So it pays to make waves, and sadly, unlike with sex discrimination, there are no laws protecting the workplace from jerks.

Defining jerks as moderately disagreeable people, the study showed that disagreeable men earned an average of 18 percent (or almost $10,000) more than the agreeable man, reports the Chicago Sun-Times. And disagreeable women earned 5 percent (or almost $2,000) more than their pleasant counterparts.

Chicago cops' sick leave equals 365 days every two years. Unbelievable. No wonder the city is in such dire financial straits.

And guess what happens when employees get a year's worth of sick leave every two years? People abuse it. Like when cops go out to eat while "sick," do some shopping, or even visit the Caribbean, as revealed by an internal police investigation of abuse of sick leave, reports the Chicago Sun-Times.

Michael Wellek -- the owner of suburban stripclubs Cowboys, Heavenly Bodies, and Skybox -- is now being sued by one of his strippers in a wage claim. The federal lawsuit brought against Wellek is just the latest legal trouble for the 63-year-old who is currently serving time in prison for tax fraud.

Argyro Roula Manis is seeking unpaid wages from the past five years in a proposed class action lawsuit against Wellek, reports the Chicago Tribune. Manis, a stripper, claimed that she and similarly situated dancers often worked more than 40 hours a week at Wellek's stripclubs but never got paid overtime. In addition, Manis says that in some weeks, she wasn't even paid minimum wage.