An Overview and Update of Employment Legal Issues
Jim will identify employment risk-management strategies for dealing with contemporary EEO litigation. He will identify trends in Title VII and ADEA class action litigation and detail successful rebuttal strategies. He will also identify cutting-edge issues such as federal efforts to define who qualifies as an applicant.
Speaker
Jim Sharf
President
Sharf and Associates
Jim Sharf advises employment attorneys, HR managers, and fellow industrial psychologists on developing, implementing and defending selection and appraisal systems that minimize the risk of employment litigation. Most recently he directed litigation support for the Human Resource Group of Aon Consulting in their Washington office. Jim brings three decades' of regulatory experience in dealing with EEO liability involving:
Age (ADEA) discrimination challenges to downsizing and reengineering decisions involving corrective actions & terminations; Race and gender (Title VII) discrimination challenges to selection, performance appraisal and promotion systems; Disparate impact claims challenging minimum education & experience requirements and employment tests; Disparate treatment claims challenging subjective employment decisions, unstructured interviews, and performance appraisals; and Class certification arguments under both Title VII and the Dept. of Labor's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs' enforcement of Executive Order 11246.
As EEOC's Chief Psychologist in the mid-1970s, Jim drafted the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. He later served as Special Assistant to EEOC's Chairman for whom he drafted the "race norming" prohibition in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. He has testified as an expert witness on class certification and "job related and consistent with business necessity" rebuttal burdens in both State and Federal courts. An author of over 50 articles and chapters on fair employment, he has conducted dozens of EEO seminars and workshops with employment attorneys nationwide. His most recent text is a risk-management analysis of contemporary trends in employment class action litigation. Jim is a Fellow of both the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the American Psychological Association.
