U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently stepped up its audit initiative, issuing Notices of Inspection (NOIs) to 652 businesses nationwide, more than it issued all of last fiscal year. The inspections are one of the federal government’s most powerful tools to enforce employment and immigration laws.
The notices alerted business owners to impending inspections of their hiring records to ensure that they comply with employment eligibility laws and regulations. Employers must complete and retain a Form I-9 for each person they hire. As part of that process, they must review and record employee identity documents to determine whether they appear to be genuine. Be sure your district is using the most recent Form I-9 with a revision date of 2/02/09 
. You’ll find the date in the lower righthand corner.
The initiative shows ICE’s increased focus on holding employers accountable for their hiring practices and ensuring a legal workforce. “This nationwide effort is a first step in ICE’s long-term strategy to address and deter illegal employment,” said Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for ICE John Morton. The businesses were selected for inspection as a result of leads and information obtained through investigative means.
ICE issued 503 similar notices in FY 2008.
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee followed through on her promise to dismiss ineffective teachers by firing 250 tenured and novice instructors for poor performance or failing to obtain a teaching license. Approximately 60 of the terminated teachers were first- or second-year teachers still on probation. Around 80 were experienced teachers who had been put on a 90-day plan to improve or face termination. The remaining 110 failed to earn the proper teaching license.
Dismissing 80 tenured teachers for performance reasons is a first for the district, which has generally dismissed just a handful of ineffective teachers each year. A D.C. teacher can be put on a 90-day plan if a principal’s classroom observation finds him or her lacking in six of 17 categories. Teachers are assigned a helping teacher, attend a series of conferences, and experience scheduled and unscheduled classroom visits by administrators in an effort to help them improve.
The 90-day plan has been on the district’s books for years but Rhee is the first chancellor to use it aggressively. Others considered the process cumbersome and time-consuming. Late last year, 157 teachers were placed on the plan.
The Washington Teachers’ Union intends to appeal some of the firings on the basis that teachers did not receive adequate support.
—“About 250 Teachers Are Given Pink Slips/Union Will Appeal Some of Rhee’s Firings,” by Bill Turque, The Washington Post, June 19, 2009.
In a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, the U.S. Supreme Court in Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc. , held that a plaintiff bringing an age discrimination claim under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) must show by a preponderance of the evidence that age was the “but for” (or decisive) cause of the employer’s adverse employment decision. Employers no longer need to show that they would have made the same decision regardless of age, even if an employee can produce evidence that age may have been a contributing factor in the employer’s decision.
The court held that the so-called burden-shifting method of determining liability in Title VII cases cannot be applied to ADEA cases because of the different language in the two laws. The ADEA prohibits discrimination “because of” age, whereas Title VII proscribes other forms of employment discrimination where the improper consideration was a “motivating factor” for the adverse employment decision.
The Court emphasized that when Congress amended Title VII to explicitly authorize discrimination claims where more than one motive may be at work, it did not amend ADEA. According to the Court, “[w]hen Congress amends one statutory provision but not another, it is presumed to have acted intentionally.”
The bottom line for school districts and other employers is that it will be much more difficult for older employees to prevail in cases where they are laid off in favor of younger, less costly employees.
The Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii will begin a pilot merit pay program this fall. However, before teachers see a bigger paycheck, they’ll have to settle for a simulation of the changes they could see—their “virtual pay.”
The schools’ leaders chose to try the merit pay simulation so it could work out any kinks in the test phase, before a real system is put in place. Eventually, the school system wants all teachers and administrators at all of its campuses to be eligible for incentives.
Kamehameha Schools Vice President Rod Chamberlain said that at one time, teachers had to wait 25 years to earn top pay, but potential new teachers aren’t willing to wait that long.
“Hawaii’s Kamehameha Schools to Introduce ‘Virtual’ Merit Pay,” by The Associated Press, June 17, 2009.
