What Obama Should Do About Workplace Discrimination

What Obama Should Do About Workplace Discrimination

LAST week, the defense contractor DynCorp International announced that it had changed its corporate policies to forbid discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. The company’s decision was voluntary but came under pressure: DynCorp recently agreed to a $155,000 settlement with an aircraft mechanic named James Friso, a heterosexual man who endured anti-gay epithets and other harassment at his DynCorp workplace.

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Workplace Discrimination for Caregivers: A Reality

Discrimination against caregivers is still a reality in the American workplace, reports Melanie Trottman in a story in today’s Wall Street Journal.At an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission hearing Wednesday in Washington, D.C., employment and legal experts said that pregnant women and caregivers face everything from harassment and hostility on the job to terminations and decreased work hours. That’s despite a law passed 30 years ago – the Pregnancy Discrimination Act – and other measures like the Family and Medical Leave Act intended to protect workers balancing job and family obligations

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Age Discrimination in the Workplace

Nearly a third of Massachusetts residents report that they or someone they know has experienced age discrimination, a new AARP survey finds

According to Debbie Chalfie, AARP expert on age discrimination, older workers are concerned about keeping their jobs, and hiring bias has been a top issue during the economic slump. “Everyone has taken it on the chin during this recession, but older workers are the ones who don’t have the time to recover if they’ve lost their jobs, or used up their savings.”

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Progressives forming boycott over Papa John’s CEO’s response to Obama’s election

Many progressives are today organizing a boycott over Papa John’s threat to cut worker hours in response to President Obama’s re-election. John Schnatter, the CEO of Papa John’s, said that as a result of Obama’s re-election, and the subsequent implementation of Obamacare, he would consider cutting his employees hours. Scnatter’s comments immediately created controversy, and many Twitter and Facebook users are now promising to boycott the pizza chain.

This is not the first time that Schnatter has taken issue with Obamacare. In August of 2012, Schnatter said he would have to raise pizza prizes by up to 20 cents in order to pay for increased costs under Obamacare. Many Facebook users angrily replied that would gladly pay 14 cents more per pizza for increased access to health care. It is also worth noting that Obamacare provides tax credits and deductions to help offset the costs of health care insurance.

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Privacy in America: Workplace Drug Testing

INVASION AND ERROR However routine drug tests have become, they’re still intrusive. Often, another person is there to observe the employee to ensure there is no specimen tampering. Even indirect observation can be degrading; typically, workers must remove their outer garments and urinate in a bathroom in which the water supply has been turned off. The lab procedure is a second invasion of privacy. Urinalysis reveals not only the presence of illegal drugs, but also the existence of many other physical and medical conditions, including genetic predisposition to disease – or pregnancy. In 1988, the Washington, D.C. Police Department admitted it used urine samples collected for drug tests to screen female employees for pregnancy – withouttheir knowledge or consent.

Furthermore, human error in the lab, or the test’s failure to distinguish between legal and illegal substances, can make even a small margin of error add up to a huge potential for false positive results. In 1992, an estimated 22 million tests were adminstered. If five percent yielded false positive results (a conservative estimate of false positive rates) that means 1.1 million people who could have been fired, or denied jobs – because of a mistake.

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Preventing Bias On the Job

Even if discrimination based on sexual orientation were rare, there would be reason to outlaw it. But there is strong evidence gay and lesbian workers are treated unfairly.Even before President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage, that cause had become synonymous in many minds with gay rights. But an equally important item on the equality agenda is protection of gays, lesbians and transgender people from job discrimination.Last week the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a hearing on the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA, which would outlaw workplace discrimination on the basis of “actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.” Sixteen states, including California, and 140 localities protect gays and lesbians from discrimination, but 56% of the U.S. population lives in areas without such protection. That would be remedied with the enactment of ENDA.

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Medical Marijuana at Work: Your Obligations and Limitations

In Connecticut, a new law took effect in October that permits medical marijuana usage. Under “An Act Concerning the Palliative Use of Marijuana,” the use of prescribed medical marijuana is permitted to alleviate symptoms of a debilitating medical condition, such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV, and Parkinson’s disease. This law prohibits employers from refusing to hire, discharge, penalize, or threaten an employee solely on the basis of his status as a qualifying patient or primary caregiver for someone who uses medical marijuana.
It’s clear from recent legislative action that the topic of medical marijuana usage isn’t going away. Now is the time to get up to date on the types of restrictions and obligations you could face when the issue of medical marijuana usage arises in your workplace.

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Marijuana eases painful MS muscle cramping

NaturalNews) A recent Reuters write-up of a marijuana for an MS pain and spasticity trial highlighted positive results for the MS (muscular or multiple sclerosis) patients after using marijuana. They felt less pain and spasticity, which consists of extreme muscular tension, cramps and uncontrollable muscle spasms.
MS is a degenerative autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that eats away at the nerves’ protective myelin sheaths, which also assist with transmitting nerve signals.

The test subjects using marijuana reported feeling better, being more relaxed, and being able to function better. You’d think the phrase “looks promising” would have been part of the Reuters release. Instead, the researchers equivocated cautiously with comments about the test’s questionable accuracy and unproven long term marijuana effects on cognitive abilities.

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4 Office Faux Pas To Avoid At All Costs

There are certain things that simply should not be done in the office or in the company of colleagues if you wish to continue commanding respect amongst your co-workers.
In any social situation, there are unspoken rules as to what you can and can’t do and the office is no exception. What’s appropriate when you’re at home or in a bar with some friends is probably not appropriate in the office. This goes for office social events such as Christmas parties as well as the everyday office environment. When with your colleagues in a work-related situation, you should act professionally as you don’t want to get fired or sanctioned for inappropriate behavior.

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Drug Testing in the Workplace: A Bad Idea and a Bad Investment

Indiscriminate testing of employees for drug use is an intrusive and degrading process that undermines our most deeply held tenets of fairness and privacy in the workplace. It should not be surprising, then, that a recent study concluded that workplace drug testing lowers productivity. What is surprising is that, despite these obvious liabilities, employers continue to make drug testing in the workplace a growth industry in the United States.

Although employees of private companies are not entitled to the same constitutional protections as public employees, private employers could benefit from reading court rulings on drug testing in the public-sector workplace. Arcane as the courts can be, we rely on them to interpret constitutional principles for us in meaningful ways that ultimately become part of our culture.

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ESCO Corporation chooses employee termination over layoffs, another effect of Obamacare?

How does a company decide the best method of attack when they need to “thin the herd” in these tough times, and where do they point the blame finger at?
Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, ESCO Corporation is a leading manufacturer of high-quality products for mining, construction, wood processing, rock crushing, dredging and other industrial industries. With Obamacare hovering over them, production numbers down, and a major customer pulling out, panic set in and they created a disastrous plan of action.

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Getting the best office layout

Believe it or not the layout of your office space is very important in how to motivate your staff work while keeping within the health and safety guidelines. For example did you know that if you place your staff’s desk so they have a clear view of a window it provides inspiration for your creative staff? However if you place one of your staffs desk so that they are facing a window directly it is more likely to cause them more of a distraction throughout the day rather than encourage them to work. Therefore getting the best office layout is very beneficial to both your staff and your business.

Most Offices go for the railroad approach when organizing employee desks in that all desks are side by side in a line. This does mean more desks can fit into the space provided however it can create a cluttered look and your employees feeling squashed into a room. By giving each desk a foot or two of space in between each other it will give your employees the space they need to not feel claustrophobic. Office partitioning can also be a welcome addition in some offices as it provides the employees with a certain amount of privacy.

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ESCO Corporation Portland Oregon: Discrimination in the workplace

Fairness and privacy rights in the workplace are important issues! No one should be treated differently because they don’t have an certain title, work in a certain department, or have a relative in high places. Company policies should be applicable for all employees. Companies should also offer compassion and options when their employees have circumstances that may put their job in jeopardy.

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ESCO Corporation Joins The List Of Companies Cutting Jobs Because of Obamacare

Instead of company layoffs that their employees were expecting, the company changed course and surprised everyone with job terminations. Using workplace drug testing as a strategy, they quickly updated their employee handbook with new policies and were able to fire employees to avoid costs like health insurance and unemployment benefits.
Cancer victim Holly Hicks states, “My husband was a dedicated employee of ESCO for 39 with a spotless record. He failed his drug test because of a trace of THC. He had escaped our world of cancer for a few hours and inhaled three puffs of marijuana five days before being tested. ESCO took away our income and our health insurance that I need to continue my cancer treatments. They denied his unemployment benefits that he paid into for 39 years. How can ESCO Corporation president Calvin Collins justify what they did to us and so many other families? We’re asking the public to support us by signing our petition. We are asking ESCO to grant unemployment benefits so we can pay for my cancer treatments. So far, the company has ignored our attempts to communicate with us.

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ESCO Corporation discriminates against its employees

It was common knowledge that a large layoff was coming very soon. Esco Corp decided that they needed a fast and dirty way to get rid of a lot of employees first so they could save $$$.

Paul Hicks was one of many employees that failed their test that day and was fired. His test showed a “trace” of marijuana in the results. Could it have been from Second Hand Exposure to his wife’s use of marijuana while undergoing cancer treatments? Could it have been from taking a few puffs to escape the world of cancer we’ve been living in all year? Do either of these things warrant firing a 39 year employee with a shining record?

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Getting the best office layout

Believe it or not the layout of your office space is very important in how to motivate your staff work while keeping within the health and safety guidelines. For example did you know that if you place your staff’s desk so they have a clear view of a window it provides inspiration for your creative staff? However if you place one of your staffs desk so that they are facing a window directly it is more likely to cause them more of a distraction throughout the day rather than encourage them to work. Therefore getting the best office layout is very beneficial to both your staff and your business.

Believe it or not the layout of your office space is very important in how to motivate your staff work while keeping within the health and safety guidelines. For example did you know that if you place your staff’s desk so they have a clear view of a window it provides inspiration for your creative staff? However if you place one of your staffs desk so that they are facing a window directly it is more likely to cause them more of a distraction throughout the day rather than encourage them to work. Therefore getting the best office layout is very beneficial to both your staff and your business.
Most Offices go for the railroad approach when organizing employee desks in that all desks are side by side in a line. This does mean more desks can fit into the space provided however it can create a cluttered look and your employees feeling squashed into a room. By giving each desk a foot or two of space in between each other it will give your employees the space they need to not feel claustrophobic. Office partitioning can also be a welcome addition in some offices as it provides the employees with a certain amount of privacy.
Most Offices go for the railroad approach when organizing employee desks in that all desks are side by side in a line. This does mean more desks can fit into the space provided however it can create a cluttered look and your employees feeling squashed into a room. By giving each desk a foot or two of space in between each other it will give your employees the space they need to not feel claustrophobic. Office partitioning can also be a welcome addition in some offices as it provides the employees with a certain amount of privacy.

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Four Ways to Foster Fairness in the Workplace

Employee concerns over pay systems, managerial favoritism and equal recognition are common leadership challenges. While leaders of some of the best small workplaces struggle with fairness issues just like their corporate counterparts, we’ve found that they often achieve more favorable results among their staffs nearly 10 percent more often. This greater success is the result of thoughtful and comprehensive management approaches. To help your organization strengthen its own tactics, here are a few lessons to consider:

Reaffirm that everyone will receive an equal opportunity to be recognized. One of the fastest ways to erode a workplace’s sense of fairness is by giving recognition unequally. This challenge can be especially difficult when managing employees across multiple sites. When McMurry, a Phoenix, Ariz.-based full-service marketing communications company, acquired a second site, leaders were faced with how to adapt their annual employee awards event in order to promote fairness. The company’s leaders doubled up, dividing the event into two presentations — one at each site held in successive weeks. The events were coordinated so that when one location held its event, a simultaneous celebration was held in the other.

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Fairness in Workplace Key to Employee, Organizational Health

If you spend most of your workday contemplating the behavior of your boss, your boss’ boss, or your beloved co-workers, rest assured you’re not alone. So does Deborah Rupp—that’s her job. Rupp is an industrial-organizational psychologist, a scientist who studies human behavior in the workplace with the aim of understanding the employee-employer interface.

Rupp is particularly interested in organizational justice. “Organizational justice explores the psychological process by which employees come to judge their workplace as fair or unfair,” says Rupp. The field explores how workers experience emotions, their behavioral reactions to these emotions, and how attitudes and perceptions of an organization change.

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Extended Unemployment Benefits Return To Some States

WASHINGTON — People laid off through no fault of their own are eligible for fewer and fewer weeks of unemployment insurance as the government pares back the safety net deployed in response to the worst recession since the Great Depression.

But since Congress said states should lose access to some benefits automatically as unemployment declines, volatility in the numbers means states are seeing their eligibility for some federal jobless benefits trigger off and on. In the past month, eight states have regained eligibility for several months’ worth of benefits they’d only recently lost.

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ESCO Corporation Calvin Collins President

September 12th, 2012

• ESCO Corporation fires several employees based on failed drug test results without any regard to their personal situation or employment record.
• Temination was issued by one brief phone call from the HR department advising of the loss of employment and intention of denying unemployment benefits.
• Employees were not allowed to speak to upper management concerning their termination.
• Employess who lost their jobs that day including dedicated personal that had been with the company for 15, 25 and 39 years.
• Paul Hicks was terminated for having a trace of THC in his test results.

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Employee Drug Testing Rights

Drug Testing Is Now Commonplace .Thirty, or one-hundred years ago, asking an employee to submit to drug testing as a condition of continued employment would be unbelievable and most certainly it would have been considered an invasion of employee privacy and a violation of employee rights. Today, such employee drug testing is so commonplace that it generates almost no opposition. The Wall Street Journal reported that about 90% of Fortune 200 companies have employee rug testing programs. Society now readily tolerates employee drug testing as commonplace. The remarkable aspect about employee alcohol and drug testing is how acceptable it has become in such a short period of time and how employee drug testing laws have evolved so quickly to accommodate this questionable practice. Employee Drug Testing – Who Is Subject To Drug Testing Laws? Today, individuals subject to employee drug testing laws include government employees, military personnel, those involved in the transportation industry, student athletes, and countless other employees who consent to employee drug testing as a condition of employment and continued employment. Drug testing laws may also require other individuals to submit to drug testing, such as welfare and other public assistance recipients and anyone arrested under Federal law. Employee drug testing is routinely required as a condition of parole under current drug testing laws.

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Employee Drug Testing Pros and Cons

Pros of Workplace Drug Testing

Workers who abuse drugs pose a safety risk in the workplace. Businesses often face a higher exposure to liability due to drug-related work accidents. According to the United States Department of Labor, 10 to 20 percent of U.S. workers involved in fatal on-the-job accidents tested positive for illicit drugs and alcohol. Employers often help employees caught abusing drugs by placing in them in recovery programs at the company’s expense. This benefits the employer who can use the experienced employee (after completion of a recovery program) without having to hire and train someone new. The employee benefits from the freedom from drug addiction as well as financially, emotionally, and spiritually.

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Portland couple use Change.org to petition against brutal actions of ESCO Corporation

Cancer victim and family use social media platforms to bring awareness to the public and fight back.

Portland, OR  (PRBuzz.com) December 11, 2012 — One family in Portland is looking for justice. Paul and Holly Hicks were shown no mercy or compassion when the company that Paul worked for, ESCO Corporation, promptly removed him from his position. The family now has no way of continuing treatment for Holly’s cancer. The couple is petitioning the company to provide Paul, and employees like him, with the unemployment benefits that they are denying.

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Women Haven’t Gained A Larger Share Of Corporate Board Seats In Seven Years

In addition to grappling with a persistent pay gap, working women also have to deal with extreme difficulty ascending to powerful corporate positions, according to a report by the research organization Catalyst. As Bryce Covert explained at The Nation:

Women held just over 14 percent of executive officer positions at Fortune 500 companies this year and 16.6 percent of board seats at the same. Adding insult to injury, an even smaller percent of those female executive officers are counted among the highest earners—less than 8 percent of the top earner positions were held by women. Meanwhile, a full quarter of these companies simply had no women executive officers at all and one-tenth had no women directors on their boards. [...]
Did this year represent a step forward? Not even close. Women’s share of these positions went up by a mere half of a percentage point or less last year. Even worse, 2012 was the seventh consecutive year in which we haven’t seen any growth in board seats and the third year of stagnation in the C-suite.

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What to Do If You are Discriminated Against in the Workplace?

Dealing with discrimination in the workplace is a stressful situation. Unfortunately, it is also often stressful to determine how to respond to the discrimination. But by understanding how to respond to discrimination and the appropriate steps to report the discrimination, you can work to take control of a bad situation and to correct the problem.

Documentation

Many employees fail to take action after an act of discrimination takes place, hoping that the problem will go away. Regardless of whether an employee decides to take immediate action or wait to see if the problem continues, the employee should begin documenting the discriminatory acts. When documenting the discrimination, the employee should note what happened and who did it. The employee should also note the day and time of the event and any witnesses. Employees should understand that some laws require the reporting of the discriminatory act within a specific time period.

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Work it Out: Getting Along with Co-Workers

Whether it’s a co-worker who bulldozes us during staff meetings and shoots down every new idea, or several colleagues who make up a clique outsiders just can’t break into, we’ve all had to work with people we simply don’t like. They can turn a job you otherwise enjoy into your own daily personal hell.

Some perspective is in order. While your co-worker’s behavior may feel like a personal affront you did nothing to deserve, he or she may feel affronted, too, says Andy Selig, ScD, a management and organizational psychologist who often mediates tense workplace relations. “Most of the time, all the protagonists involved feel like victims,” he says.

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Why Co-Workers Don’t Like You

Your co-workers are judging you. Beneath a veneer of professional collegiality, they’re taking note of the mess on your desk, how loudly you chew, even your word choices.

Obviously, serious misconduct such as discrimination and harassment can lead to a job loss. But small irritants can hurt productivity and build walls between co-workers.

“Those little annoyances, like having a really sloppy work area or being a disgusting desk eater, can loom large,” says Charles Purdy, senior editor at jobs site Monster.com.

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Apple supplier Foxconn sees profits drop due to higher employee costs

Score one for human rights, zero for an Apple supplier’s bottom line. Foxconn parent company Hon Hai Precision Industry posted lower profits than usual in the first quarter of 2012 due to higher employee costs.

These costs are directly related to fair labor audits prompted by Apple. The manufacturer’s profit margin, while still robust, slid from 7.25 percent in 2011 to 4 percent in 2012.

At the beginning of the year, a bombshell report revealed Apple’s suppliers were engaging in wildly unfair labor practices, up to and including child labor and even slave labor. Other issues included non-payment or late payment of workers, environmental hazards, and worse.

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The Value of Investing in Employees Health

These days employees are often not bound by the 40-hour per week convention and work stress can extend well after you’ve clocked out. Although it is not the responsibility of employers to offer support to their workforce after hours, employees health during the work day is something that a company should concentrate on wherever possible.
There are certain responsibilities that companies should take on board with regard to health of employees.
The reasons employers might shy away from such practices is obviously because of the cost to the company. Providing various health-centred services for employees and promoting social wellness is not mandatory from a legal standpoint but studies have shown how this approach should invariably be a fruitful one. Employees are much more likely to increase productivity if they adopt a healthier lifestyle thanks to work initiatives.

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Here’s to the next half-century – It’s taking a long time, but things are getting better

“WOMEN ARE NOT at the top anywhere,” says Herminia Ibarra, a professor at the INSEAD business school near Paris. “Many get on the high-potential list and then languish there for ever.” That is broadly true not only in business but also in politics, academia, law, medicine, the arts and almost any other field you care to mention.

In parliaments across the world women on average hold just 20% of the seats (see chart 6), though again the Nordics do much better. In Finland—one of the first countries to give them the vote, in 1906—women have at various times held more than half the ministerial jobs. The prime minister one back was a woman and so is the current president, Tarja Halonen, the first female to hold the post. A lawyer, doughty fighter for women’s rights and single mother, she is nearing the end of her second and final term of office but would like to see another woman president soon: “Once is not enough.” Elsewhere too female political leaders are becoming less unusual—think of Germany’s Angela Merkel, Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, Australia’s Julia Gillard or Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf—but still far from common.

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Workers lament ‘unfair treatment’

WINDHOEK – Hochland Park Spar is again in the spotlight, after several of its employees alleged they are victims of racism and bad treatment by management.


Brigitte Zaire, a cashier at the Tops Bottle Store section of the store, claimed that she was unfairly suspended on January 13, for allegedly allowing another employee to work on her till.

The unauthorised employee would have put at risk the company’s money while compromising its standards, it is alleged.

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Australia: Employer’s conduct “inexplicable” and extensions of time for unfair dismissal application allowed

A recent decision of Fair Work Australia acknowledges that an extension of time may be given for an unfair dismissal application where there is inaction from the employer after the dismissal has taken effect. Employers should therefore consider what action needs to be taken should a dismissed employee question their dismissal within 14 days of the termination taking effect.

In the case of Paul Wybrott v Veolia Environmental Services (VES) (29 March 2012), Mr Wybrott made an application for unfair dismissal some 22 days after his employment with VES was terminated for serious misconduct. This was eight days beyond the 14-day time limit set out in the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) for making such an application. However, despite the usual rigidity applied in such cases, Commissioner Bissett exercised her discretion and granted Mr Wybrott an appropriate extension of time for making the application given the reason for the delay and the actions taken by Mr Wybrott to dispute his dismissal.

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Employers engaged in anti-union activities, unfair labour practices *Draft national policy addresses archaic labour laws, but employers seen violating labour rights

While there is a need to reform archaic labour laws, enforcement must be strengthened as a matter of priority as workers are increasingly being discouraged from forming trade unions with employers resorting to anti-union activities and unfair labour practices, especially in the export processing zones, while threats to employment surface in the economy, a draft policy document spearheaded by the Senior Ministers’ Secretariat says.

The second draft of the proposed ‘National Policy on Human Resources and Employment’ was shared with a wide-range of stakeholders last week.

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Wobblies and unfair labor practices

We stand up against the boss, demanding change and stopping work. The boss fires us. We immediately mobilize, rushing to…the office of some government lawyer. What’s wrong with this picture?

When private sector employers in the United States break the law, workers can file what is known as an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Violations include threatening or retaliating against workers for lawful union activity or for acting as a group without a union, also known as “protected concerted activity.” When found guilty of a ULP, an employer may face various penalties, like an order to reinstate a fired worker with back pay.

There are many examples of the Wobblies using ULPs. The charges filed against Starbucks eventually led to a fired worker’s reinstatement. In Minneapolis, charges were filed against Jimmy John’s after a failed union election in 2010, and again last year when the company fired six union members. The NLRB nullified the election due to management’s illegal behavior. The illegal firing charges were won in court, but the employer appealed and the appeals process could take years.

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PL accuses government of treating workers unfairly

Labour MP Evarist Bartolo says government workers within the education sector were unfairly treated after being left in the dark over their employment security.

Labour spokesperson on education Evarist Bartolo said that the government treated employees within the Examinations Department and Matsec Board unjustly, by failing to keep them informed regarding their job security.

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Employment law reforms are licence to treat people badly – and still pay less

The government have already made it more difficult to claim unfair dismissal: an employee now needs two years’ service instead of one before they can bring a claim. This was no great surprise – it was two years from 1980 to 1999, when Labour reduced it to one year.

Then they considered doing away with unfair dismissal claims altogether and replacing them with “no fault dismissal” ie fixed compensation for dismissal, at a much lower level than present, without any need to establish unfairness. This was suggested in a report by the venture capitalist and Wonga investor Adrian Beecroft who happens to have given over half a million pounds to the Conservatives in the last five years.

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Court rules draughtsman was unfairly treated by employer

Datuk K.N. Segara, who led a three-man bench in allowing the appeal of former senior draughtsman Raja Abdul Rahman Raja Abdul Aziz for unfair dismissal, said private sector employees were only accorded protection under the Industrial Relations Act 1967.

He said once misconduct was proven in the industrial court, the tribunal must venture to determine whether the punishment of dismissal was warranted.

In Raja Abdul Rahman’s case, the court of appeal said his employer, Exxonmobil Exploration and Production Malaysia Inc, was unreasonable.

Segara said the right of employment of public sector workers was guaranteed under Article 135 of the Federal Constitution and Chapter D of the General Orders.

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Corporate Profits Hit Record High While Worker Wages Hit Record Low

A constant conservative charge against President Obama is that he is inherently anti-business. However, businesses keep defying the storyline by making larger and larger profits, rebounding nicely out of the Great Recession.

In the third quarter of this year, “corporate earnings were $1.75 trillion, up 18.6% from a year ago.” Corporations are currently making more as a percentage of the economy than they ever have since such records were kept. But at the same time, wages as a percentage of the economy are at an all-time low, as this chart shows. (The red line is corporate profits; the blue line is private sector wages.):

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Can an Employer Dock my Pay?

As an employee, it’s natural to feel some fear about the security of your job or salary. Many workers worry that their salary will be docked for a number of reasons, such as turning up to work late, missing a meeting, a customer not paying and so forth.

While there are indeed certain situations in which an employer is legally allowed to dock your pay, there are also provisions in place to ensure employees are treated fairly and ethically.

In place is the Employment Rights Act 1996, which prevents “unlawful deduction from wages”. Should an employer breach the conditions within the Act, a worker would be legally allowed to make a claim with an employment tribunal regarding the unpaid money.

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Unfair treatment is not always illegal treatment

It is likely that readers in California hear a lot in the news about disgruntled employees who feel they are being treated unfairly and, as a result, bring a lawsuit against their employer. Often in these employee-related lawsuits, the employee ends up with a windfall in a final judgment against the employer.

These windfall cases are the ones that most often make the news. However, employers in California will be interested to hear about a recent case that did not end up so rosy for the employee.

A county sheriff in California recently filed a lawsuit for alleged retaliation and discrimination under the Fair Employment and Housing Act. He claimed that he had trouble getting along with his co-workers and that his partners were frequently asking for transfers. When he and one of his partners got into a heated argument that resulted in the two yelling at each other, he claimed he worked in a hostile environment. The lawsuit was filed shortly thereafter.

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Employment and Partnership law

Obtaining the right advice from a firm of solicitors that understands your needs is paramount in any legal situation. In terms of employment and partnership law, being able to access such advice at short notice may help resolve an issue before it escalates.

Employee rights is an area where legal knowhow is important and whether you are an employer or an employee, getting the right advice at the right time is vital for a satisfactory outcome to a dispute.

In so many walks of life, a reliable adage is “prevention is better than cure” and that applies in so many ways when it comes to employment law.

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Employment law: Unfair treatment at work

Unfair treatment at work is very stressful. I’ve been dealing with it for a while but I’m trying to do something about it. You have to  try and stand up for yourself and not accept any kind of treatment. The majority of cases detail discrimination though.  Discrimination occurs when an employee suffers unfavorable or unfair treatment due to their race, religion, national origin, disabled or veteran status, or other legally protected characteristics. The first step for that is contacting EEO. EEO law stipulates that an employee who experiences discrimination can seek remedies including: Back pay, restoration of their old job (if they were fired or reassigned), a court order to stop the discrimination, compensation for pain and suffering.

My employer has failed to address my complaints properly against my supervisor’s conduct. They have been negligent  and allowed known stress-causing conditions to persist without taking reasonable measures to prevent them. My workplace is utterly intolerable and stressful. My life now surrounds my everyday workplace issues.

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Healthcare Works For Insurance Companiesill Break Us All

My companies premiums increased 14% over last year, 2 years ago a $1000 deductable was put in place for each participant. With our anual salary increases  coming in at around 2% we are in a precarious situation. There has been an emphasis on ”health” at work. This sounds like a good thing but the goal is finding ways to charge you more for your healthcare. Employees that don’t participate in having your body mass index (BMI) and other health statistics sent to the insurance company before a cut off date pay a penalty. If you smoke you must pay an additional penalty every payday. This is just the beginning of this trend with genetic testing to see if you might be predisosed to develop diabetes, cancer, etc and if you are…you will pay more for you “group” insurance. The term group insurance doesn’t mean the same thing it used to. All this additional money out of our pockets appears to be going to straight to the top with the CEOs of our company and healthcare companies. It is just one of many things that have changed over the past 20 years that is decimating the middle class.

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The surprising effectiveness of medical marijuana

The other highly surprising thing I learnt at the recent SSDP UK conference was just how amazingly effective cannabis is as a medicine. Obviously, I knew that marijuana was available as ‘medicine’ in some countries and US states. But I largely thought the quotation marks were serving a purpose. While I had no doubt that it was a good psychic remedy. If it was at all genuinely medicinal, I had the vague idea that it’s main benefits were largely secondary, a palliative that helps managed pain and nausea.  In fact, medical marijuana does a lot more than that. A hell of a lot more. To give you some idea take a look at this list of over a hundred treatable conditions. And it really is treatment, not just management of pain and other side effects. It may even cure cancer.
The point was brought forcefully home to me at the conference by two patient/activists,  Clark French and Greg de Hoedt, who hosted a panel on their own experiences. Clark French has multiple sclerosis and has at times been confined to a wheelchair by his condition. Taking regular medications certainly helped his condition but often with numerous unpleasant side effects, which then required more drugs with more side effects. Before trying medical marijuana he was on a cocktail of 11 different medications and he was still sick. Then he discovered that marijuana helped with every single symptom. Since then he has visited California to talk to medical marijuana professionals and discover which strains would work best for him. His MS is still there but it is much more under control and as a result of using marijuana he has cut down to just one other medication.

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Women In the Workplace: A Call For Change

The July/August issue of Atlantic Magazine presented an op-ed by former State Department Director of Policy Planning, Anne-Marie Slaughter, entitled “Why Women Still Can’t Have it All”. The op-ed quickly went viral, provoking a variety of responses. If the piece sounds a like an affront to some traditional feminist ideals, that is because it is. Slaughter draws from her own experience, explaining the mere impossibility of sustaining both her responsibilities as a mother with two teenage sons and a woman with a high profile government position.


But what now? Whether you side with those who believe one can “have it all” or whether you believe “having it all” is a naive wish, what action should take place to make the workplace more equitable?

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More Women in the Workplace — An Under-tapped Recipe for Success

When the economy slipped into a deep recession during late 2007, the U.S. labor market had sustained comparable unemployment rates for men and women throughout the post-war era; in fact, the gender unemployment gap never exceeded 1 percent during this period. As the recession deepened and the job market hemorrhaged more than 8.4 million jobs between December 2007 and October 2009, the unemployment rate among adult men soared to a high of 11 percent, while the unemployment rate among adult women peaked at 8.3 percent. It has been just over three years since the recession officially ended and recovery technically began. According to the latest figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor Statistics, the gender unemployment gap has closed to within 0.4 percent. But rather than standing as an indicate of gender equity, this figure underscores some significant structural shifts in the post-recessive labor market with stark implications for women in the workforce.

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It’s 2013 and you know what? It still sucks to be a woman in the workplace. And if you want to be CEO of a large company? Good luck with that too.Sure, things have improved. Just watch an episode ofMad Men and you’ll see what our mothers and grandmothers had to deal with only a short time ago. Today, there’s more equality in the workplace. There’s less discrimination. There are way more women in upper management than ever before. Females now fight in the military and lead companies. But let’s face it: women still have a long way to go if they’re to be treated equally by men in the office.

And if you don’t believe me just ask Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. She’s been getting a ton of grief because she had the audacity to say that employers should be able to ask female employees if they plan to get pregnant. But… she’s right! Or ask Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo! who underwent unprecedented scrutiny when she got the job last year AND then announced she was pregnant to boot. How shocking! A smart, competent woman who also wants… to have a baby too? Imagine the number of investors who would’ve shorted Yahoo!’s stock if she had to miss a meeting because of menstrual cramps (a condition that legitimately affects millions of women).

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Tips for Minimizing Workplace Negativity

Nothing affects employee morale more insidiously than persistent workplace negativity. It saps the energy of your organization and diverts critical attention from work and performance. Negativity occurs in the attitude, outlook, and talk of one department member, or in a crescendo of voices responding to a workplace decision or event.

Learn About Workplace Negativity

As a manager or human resources professional, you are closely in touch with employees throughout the company. This allows you to keep your fingers on the pulse of the organization to sense workplace negativity. It enables you to establish and heed early warning signals that all is not well. You receive employee complaints, do exit interviews with employees who leave, and know the reputation of your organization in your community.

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In Danger of Getting Fired or Laid Off?

 

Employment termination - no matter the cause – is scary, disorienting, and disruptive to habitual patterns. 

 Getting fired is never fun; layoffs are equally disheartening. In either scenario, your feelings of self worth and self esteem are dealt a blow. Just when you most need a positive outlook to help you find your next opportunity, you feel dizzy as if your whole world is spinning out of control. Don’t despair. Better? This is how to prepare yourself for your next layoff or employment termination – before the fateful meeting.

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Women and the Workplace: The benefits of gender diversity put to the test

Sweeping generalizations are among the great dangers to be avoided when discussing the appointment of more women at senior levels in business.

Broad statements – no matter how intuitive – about “what women bring” are potentially damaging both to the cause itself and to its desired effect, which is better leadership.

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