Paper #1

Please answer all 3 points in each the paper.

1. Why is it important to classify workers correctly as employees or independent contractors?

2. Lopez, Inc is an educational consulting company. It has a staff of 27 employees and 5 independent contractors. All of the employees and independent contractors are of Hispanic descent.

Lopez needs to hire one sales person and one computer programmer for a project. It intends to hire an employee to fill the position of full-time sales person. It intends to hire an independent contractor for the programming project. Lee, an Asian male applies for the programmer project. Larry, a white male, applies for the sales person position. Neither Lee nor Larry is hired.

Both learn that Lopez, not only has a history of only hiring Hispanics, but that it, indeed, hired Hispanics for the sales person and independent contractor positions. Do either Lee or Larry have a claim for discrimination under federal law?

3.List the four criteria that must satisfied by an employer to classify a worker as an independent contractor.

Paper #2

1. Describe an employer's best approach to avoiding liability for racial harassment in the workplace.

2. The Inter-Pacific Railroad employs Francisco McGregor, a Hispanic man, as a supervisory conductor on its commuter trains. Except for one white woman, all of the other supervisory conductors employed by Inter-Pacific were black men. Francisco's Spanish nickname is "Paco." The other supervisor conductors referred to Francisco as "Taco."

They used racial slurs, such as "beanbag," when talking about him to other employees. Francisco complained to the senior trainmaster and threatened to file a claim with EEOC. What would you suggest the trainmaster do to address Francisco's concerns and prevent him from filing a claim with the EEOC?

3.Marion Pham is a nurse of Vietnamese ancestry. The staff of the ward in which she has worked for many years at the Astral Hospital Center is very culturally diverse.

Although no one has ever demonstrated overt hostility toward her because of her race or color, she has noticed that over the years, it is usually the Asian employees who are made the brunt of practical jokes or ridiculed. At one time or another, she has observed just about every employee on the ward, including other Asian staff members, as well as the head nurse, engage in such behavior.

Each time this happens, Marion experiences a strong sense of hurt and ostracism. Otherwise, everyone on the ward is helpful and courteous to her and she is frequently asked to participate in off-work social activities with coworkers. Is this situation at Astral legally actionable, on the basis of racial harassment?

Paper #3

1. Morales, who speaks only English, owns and operates a large warehouse. Most of his workers speak only English, and he requires that all of his employees speak English, and that all communication in the workplace, which involves the performance of any job, be done in English. A number of non-English speaking workers complain about the policy on the grounds that they can converse in their native languages and still get the job done. If these non-English speaking employees bring a claim of national origin discrimination on the basis of this policy, what is Morales' best defense? Explain.

2. Franklin, a U.S. born individual of English ancestry, works for the China Lights restaurant, which is owned and operated by two U.S. citizens of Chinese ancestry.

Franklin's coworkers Jin Pan and Dongping Jiang, also U.S. citizens of Chinese ancestry, are late for work virtually everyday, but no action is take against them for this, even though the owners are aware of Jin and Dongping's tardiness, and even though there is a stated workplace policy that an employee reporting to work late, more than once in a sixty day period will be dismissed. Franklin reports to work late twice, 55 days apart, and he is dismissed. Explain whether Franklin has the basis for a national origin discrimination claim.

3. Distinguish between national origin and citizenship.

General Instructions

Writing Assignments are graded on the basis of content, organization, format, and mechanics. With regard to content, they are generally graded on the basis of issue recognition, identification of the correct legal principle to be applied, and rational application of that principle to reach a conclusion. See the individual assignments for the particular issues that must be addressed. The discussion of these issues must be organized in a way that supports the purpose of the paper.

With regard to format, the papers must be typed, double spaced, with 1" margins, size 12 font, indented paragraphs, and the student's name must be typed in the upper left corner of each page. With regard to mechanics, the papers are graded on the basis of sentence and paragraph structure, grammar, spelling, and punctuation. There will be 5 dropbox assignments available during the semester.