5 Ways to Make Video Conference Calls More Productive

1. Learn a few stealth moves.

If you decide to leave the room during the call, make sure it’s during a time when no one will notice. When you’re the next one on the agenda, it will be fairly obvious to everyone on the call that you’ve left your computer.

2. Type softly.

A few times throughout the call I took notes. The good part is that when we finished, I had clear notes about what we discussed. The bad part is that I usually hit the keys too hard (bad habit) which can be hard on everyone’s ears.

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CEO Council Demands Cuts To Poor, Elderly While Reaping Billions In Government Contracts, Tax Breaks

WASHINGTON — The corporate CEOs who have made a high-profile foray into deficit negotiations have themselves been substantially responsible for the size of the deficit they now want closed.
The companies represented by executives working with the Campaign To Fix The Debt have received trillions in federal war contracts, subsidies and bailouts, as well as specialized tax breaks and loopholes that virtually eliminate the companies’ tax bills.

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Employment discrimination lawsuit filed against city prosecutor’s office

A 61-year-old white woman, who says she was wrongfully fired from the Baltimore prosecutors’ office after 25 years on the job, has filed an employment discrimination lawsuit alleging age, race and gender discrimination in the 2010 termination.

Antoinette E. Swiec, of Baltimore, is seeking $400,000 in compensation from the Baltimore state’s attorney’s office on each of two counts, claiming she was fired because the predominantly young, African American division she worked for wanted her out.

The lawsuit was filed in  U.S. District Court Monday, and was to be served on Baltimore State’s Attorney Gregg Bernstein, though the firing occurred under his predecessor, Patricia C. Jessamy. Bernstein took office in 2011.

Mark Cheshire, a spokesman for the state’s attorneys’ office, declined to comment on the pending litigation “as a matter of policy.”

Swiec says she was the office manager of the Firearms Investigation and Violence Enforcement Unit in 2010, supervising a four-person clerical staff that was “exclusively African American and predominantly young,” with all but one person in their 20s. She reported to FIVE division chief Matthew Fraling III, whom she describes as a black male in his 40s.

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Ruling expected soon in Iowa employment discrimination lawsuit

(CNN) – According to her resume, Nansi Woods looked like a good fit for the job, an adviser position at the Iowa Workforce Development office. She had a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling, a bachelor’s degree in communications, one of several preferred fields related to the job and a minor in social work. She more than met the minimum requirements listed in the job description, which asked for an associate’s degree or certificate of education completion.

Another applicant had a bachelor’s degree in a preferred field, but was still taking courses toward a master’s degree in human resources. A third person seeking the job had no degree, no specific job experience and none of the listed computer skills. These last two applicants – both of them white – were offered the job. Woods, who is black, was never granted an interview.

A class action suit filed in 2007 on behalf of Woods and up to 6,000 other African-Americans who were passed over for jobs or promotions with the state of Iowa alleges that they were victims of discrimination.

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Racial Discrimination: Black Employee Fired After Being Called the N-Word

Racial names do not justify slapping customer. A white customer suspected of shoplifting was escorted to a security area for questioning. The customer’s white friend then barged into the area, cursing at the store employees, one of whom was Black. She used the N-word toward the Black store employee, who reacted by slapping the verbally abusive customer in the face.

The police were called and both customers were arrested. The store then fired the employee for having slapped the customer, in violation of its no-violence policy and no-physical-contact-with-customers policy. The fired employee filed a Title VII race-discrimination case, alleging that Kmart was promoting a racially hostile environment and “ratifying hate speech” by firing the victim of harassment. The court ruled against the employee. The customer’s behavior was clearly harassing and improper. However, the store took prompt action to have the police remove the offender. The company had policies on how to deal with customers for these situations and how to raise complaints without escalating a situation. Slapping a customer was against policy and not warranted by a verbal situation. The employee’s escalation to the physical level was unwarranted and justified discharge. Lee v. Kmart Corp. (D. Minn., 2012).  For more on the discrimination and the N-word, read NBA Star John Amaechi: Hate Speech Goes Beyond N- and F-Words.

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Employment discrimination suit heard in Superior Court

A former employee of the State of Alaska Division of Finance, who claims she was discriminated against, is appealing her case in Juneau Superior Court after her complaint was dismissed.

The 60-something Filipino woman, who declined to be named and who has worked for the division in Juneau for about 25 years, filed a complaint of discrimination against the division, saying it reclassified her position downward in attempt to get her to leave and also passed her over for another job in favor of a younger and less qualified person.

Oral arguments in the case were heard Friday before Judge Philip Pallenberg in Juneau Superior Court, which has the jurisdiction to hear appeals from Alaska Administrative Agencies.

The woman’s attorney Michael P. Nash. told the judge that his client was hired as an accounting clerk in 1984 and worked her way up to an accounting technician. She was tasked with work above her pay grade, such as conducting audits, and, at the urging of her coworkers and a former supervisor, she requested to have her position reclassified to a higher position in 2008.

Nash said that when the state looked into the classification, which determines pay level, the state reclassified her position downward, and the woman was demoted and her salary frozen. She retired early two months later and left in November 2009 to work for the Department of Public Safety.

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5 Reasons to Take Five-Minute Meditation Breaks at Work

1. Meditation increases our memory. A recent study showed that meditating for eight weeks was linked to having a higher density of gray matter, a part of the brain that helps with memory and learning. With all we have to keep in mind during the typical workday, who couldn’t use a little memory boost?

2. Meditation increases our attention span. Having trouble paying concentrating? Try meditating. By practicing keeping your focus on one thing at a time, such as your breath, you improve your ability to pay attention when it really matters, such as during a boring but important meeting.

3. Meditation improves our response to stress and emotion. Studies show that meditation actually changes the way our brain processes emotion, making us more resilient. And that’s not true just during meditation — the effects stay with you long after you’re done. The next time your boss yells at you, it’ll be like water off a duck’s back … well, almost.

4. Meditation gives your brain a true rest. When you take a break from work and go on social media, your brain is reading and analyzing what you’re seeing. This means it never really gets to rest, so when you get back to work you don’t feel refreshed. Meditation allows your brain to rest up so you can perform your best.

5. Meditation improves your cognitive processing. Perhaps because we’re better able to concentrate on what we’re doing and ignore distractions when we’re accustomed to meditating, people who meditate perform better on cognitive tasks. This means you’ll write better reports, come up with better responses in meetings, and do better on just about any project that comes your way.

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Tips in Proper Etiquette When Sending Email Within the Company

Try to utilize appropriate greetings. For business emails, respectful greeting should be used to be able to send across the emotion you are purporting in the mail. A simple ‘good morning’, ‘good afternoon’ or ‘good day’ will be sufficient to show the respect you have for the other person. Even for the co-worker, these starting and ending greetings should be in place to create that positive vibe. After the letter is composed, say ‘thank you’, ‘respectfully’, ‘best regards’ or other appropriate greeting to end the mail.

Use the right level of formality. As what you are making are business emails, uphold the level of formality that is called for. Address the person you are sending the email with ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ for those with higher positions. Some companies accept being addressed with a simple ‘Mr.’ or ‘Ms.’ before their names. Better ask before sending any electronic mail the right one to use. And do not forget to spell the names correctly as this can be viewed as carelessness on the recipient’s part when names are misspelled. If putting the position of the person, be sure it is the right one.

Check the spelling of all the words. Make sure that all words in the emails are spelled correctly as well. Typos that appear will already come across as emails not to be taken seriously. It may even be something that can turn off the employer for not practicing diligence before sending any email. If you are not sure how a word is spelled ask around from the co-workers or simply search the internet. There are many sources around you to ensure that all the words utilized are exact and accurate.

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Workplace Discrimination: Not Just About Race Anymore

In the last year alone, a court awarded a victim of sexual harassment a record payout ($95 million), the Supreme Court dismissed the biggest civil rights class action suit in U.S. history, and people called discrimination on everything from HIV status to a peanut allergy. The number of workplace discrimination claims concerning race and ethnicity has been increasing along a straight line for the last decade, and total claims grazed a record 100,000 in 2010, the last year for which data is available.

As we observe Martin Luther King Jr. Day, that’s sobering to consider.

“We haven’t achieved anything like the racially just and equal society that MLK envisioned,” says Ralph Richard Banks, a professor at Stanford Law School who specializes in African American issues. But that increase might also be due to more willingness to report incidents, as opposed to shrugging off bigotry, as well more awareness of what amounts to discrimination.

“But at a minimum,” says Derek Avery, a leading scholar in workplace discrimination at the Fox School of Business at Temple University, “those numbers suggest that we’re not heading in the direction that one would anticipate, as we approach 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

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DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION CAUSED BY MENTAL DISORDERS IN THE WORKPLACE

In March 2012 a federal district court held an employer liable fordisability discrimination after it terminated an employee shortly after he had requested a leave of absence to adjust to new medication for bipolar disorder. The court awarded $315,000 to the employee. This case serves as a reminder that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)applies to both mental and physical disabilities.

Under the ADA, an individual has a disability if he/she has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more of the major life activities of such individual. A “mental impairment” is defined as “[a]ny mental or psychological disorder, such as . . . emotional or mental illness.” Examples of “emotional or mental illness” include major depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders (which include panic disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders and post-traumatic stress disorders), schizophrenia and personality disorders.

Similar to employees with physical disabilities, employees with mental impairments are entitled to a reasonable accommodation, which may include changes to workplace policies, procedures or practices; leaves of absence; or physical changes to the workplace. In addition, a supervisor may be required to adjust the way he/she interacts with an employee as a reasonable accommodation. Determining whether an accommodation is reasonable is fact specific. Therefore, it is critical that an employer engage in an interactive process to determine if a reasonable accommodation exists.

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Disabled Discrimination in the Workplace

Employees and job applicants with disabilities are legally entitled to the same rights and consideration that workers without disabilities enjoy. Under federal law, an employer cannot consider a person’s disability when making hiring decisions and cannot treat him differently in the workplace because of it. If the employer does, the employee can take legal action.

Legal Definition of Disabled

The Americans With Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, protects job applicants and employees from workplace discrimination based on disability. The law defines a disability as a permanent or chronic injury or medical condition, such as blindness, hearing impairment or mobility issues such as those requiring the use of a wheelchair. Temporary ailments, such as a broken bone or a short-term illness, aren’t covered by these federal anti-discrimination laws. However, a history of illness, such as cancer now in remission, is covered. The law applies not only to obvious disabilities such as physical impairment, but also to less noticeable conditions such as emotional or mental disabilities, including learning disabilities.

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How to Recognize Disability Discrimination in the Workplace

Disability discrimination in the workplace is often illegal. Learn how to identify it and hold offenders accountable. September 14, 2012 (24-7PressRelease)– All employers have a duty to provide safe and fair working environments for their employees. Unfortunately, some employers discriminate against disabled workers. All employees should be educated in recognizing when an employer is discriminating against a disabled worker or job applicant and understand how employers can be held responsible for such illegal behavior.


This is the reason that www.AbilityJobsPlus.com was created. To help disabled individuals find employment – without being discriminated against.

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Disability Discrimination In The Workplace On The Rise

2010 saw a drastic increase in the number of workplace disability discrimination claims. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency received a record 100,000 complaints of disability discrimination in 2010, a 17% increase over the previous year.

The rise in claims was attributed in part to amendments to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that went into effect in 2009. Under the ADA Amendments Act of 2008, Congress increased the scope of qualifying disabilities to make it easier for individuals to receive protection under the important federal civil rights law. This included overturning a previous U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said available mitigating measures must be considered prior to determining if an individual has a disability.

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Disability Discrimination Information

Discrimination against the disabled or ableism is discrimination action against people based on the physical ability of their body especially against people with disabilities (Definitions of Disability) in favor of people who are not disabled.

An ableist society is said to be one that treats non-disabled individuals as the standard of “normal living”, which results in public and private places and services, education, and social work that are built to serve ‘standard’ people, thereby inherently excluding those with various disabilities.

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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 discriminates against its employees

Portland, Oregon: On September 5th, 2012, ESCO Corporation told their employees that the company was conducting a “universal” drug screening test and that all employees would have to participate on that day.

1. Universal implies that everyone is under the same policy and rules and should have been included in the procedure. Many upper management and various other employees were exempt from the procedure and not tested.

2. Privacy rights were broken when the company conducted their screenings in a group setting. This allowed everyone to see who passed or failed as the HR person escorted those who failed away. Employees also had the ability to visually see other employee test samples that were under suspect.

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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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Fact Sheet: The Wage Gap for Women The Consequences of Workplace Pay Inequity for Women in America

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, named after Lilly Ledbetter, left, was a step forward, but it fails to get to the root of the problem. The Paycheck Fairness Act would outlaw workplace policies that make disclosing one’s salary a cause for being fired.

Americans are working hard to pay their bills and take care of their families, yet too many employers make it impossible to juggle those work and family obligations. The danger of losing a job or missing a promotion because of illness, pregnancy, or taking care of loved ones when so many companies are focused solely on the bottom line leaves too many moms and dads having to choose between their jobs and their families.

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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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