Virtual Hawaii Employment Lawyer

According to a survey conducted by Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project, 56% of Americans think it’s “irresponsible” to friend your boss on Facebook, while 62% of bosses agree it’s wrong to friend an employee.

Reuters reports on other interesting results from the survey, including that 73% think it’s not OK to check Facebook at work, but 66% say checking personal e-mail is fine. Tweeting while at work is considered irresponsible for 72% of respondents, and watching online videos is wrong for 79%.

View article here:Facebook Friends

I saw this short article regarding small businesses and must say that since I started practicing employment and labor law around 15 years ago I notice the same mistakes being made by employers.

The article states:

“Small business owners might be surprised to learn they they are vulnerable to the same worker complaints that plague corporate America. In particular, more employees are suing companies for violating wage-and-hour rules, typically claiming they weren’t paid overtime. A small business that lacks in-house counsel or a human resources department can unwittingly violate federal or state laws covering workplaces. And many business owners, eager to create informal workplaces, simply neglect to educate staff on harassment or discrimination polices.”

The article goes on to list three steps that can significantly reduce the risk of liability: 1. Properly classifying your employees; 2. maintain an effective discrimination/harassment policy; and 3. maintain proper documentation.

You may view the article here: Reducing Risk in the Workplace.

“A useful tool for any growing company is the employee handbook, which outlines your policies on harassment, discrimination and discipline, and can serve as a shield in the event an employment claim is brought against your business. A handbook can also communicate your vision of the company to employees, and provide exact details on how you expect them to perform their jobs, treat customers and carry out the company’s goals.” Employee Handbooks.

Personnel and related records present risk to employers if not stored, maintained and disposed of appropriately. Employers should designate at least three levels of security for access to employee information/records. A person receiving one or more of the three designations should be given the authorization in writing. The levels are as follows: Read more…

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) has published in The Federal Register a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on a series of discrete changes to discrimination complaint regulations. The agency is soliciting comments from the public and other interested parties by Feb. 19, 2010.

The proposed changes represent consensus measures identified in the report of an internal federal sector work group run by Acting Chairman Stuart J. Ishimaru when he was an EEOC Commissioner.  The changes include allowing agencies to conduct pilot projects for complaints processing, conforming the standard for bringing complaints of retaliation in the federal sector to private sector standards, and requiring agencies to notify complainants of their right to request a hearing when an agency investigation has gone on for more than 180 days.  View the press release here:  EEOC Solicits Comments.

The EEOC will be receiving an extra $23 million to help tackle the growing problem of backlogged cases.

The 2010 omnibus appropriations bill, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Dec. 10 and by the Senate on Dec. 13, would funnel those additional millions to the EEOC to help the agency get a handle on more than 70,000 unresolved discrimination complaints.

The resource-starved EEOC recently saw a 35 percent jump in its backlog, from 54,970 cases in 2007 to 73,951 last year. The agency also saw a record number of discrimination complaints in 2008 — 95,402 — which was also a nearly 20 percent increase from 79,896 in 2007. Nearly two-thirds involved racial or gender discrimination.

Meanwhile, the agency has watched staffing levels shrink 25 percent in recent years, from 2,850 in 2001 to 2,150 in 2008. Currently the agency is hiring 200 new investigators.  View article here:  EEOC Receives More Funding.

According to the latest study from Jury Verdict Research, employment verdicts continue to be on the rise. 

The median award for all types of employment claims rose a whopping 60% in the past year, from $204,000 to $326,640. Discrimination verdicts rose 16%, from $208,000 to $241,119.

What are an employer’s chances of winning at trial?

Employers won only 39% of discrimination lawsuits in the past year, tied for the worst win rate in the past decade.  View article here:  Jury Trial Research.

GDP Revised:  Economic growth was weaker in the third quarter than originally reported, according to government data released Tuesday.

The gross domestic product, the broadest measure of the nation’s economic activity, rose at an annual rate of 2.8% in the three months ending in September, according to the Commerce Department’s first revision of the reading. The initial reading of the report a month ago came in with a 3.5% growth rate.

The decline in the growth rate was expected, in large part because of a recent report showing a growing gap between the nation’s imports and exports. Importing goods from other countries is a drag on domestic U.S. growth.

Amid the economy’s many ailments, some good news has remained mostly off the radar: The at-home work force is growing, and it is encompassing new occupations ranging from radiology and nursing to auditing and teaching.  View article here:  The Five Second Commute.

From 2007—the recession first started in December of that year—to the end of 2008, overall claims filed with the EEOC increased by 28%, from 83,000 to 95,000. Discrimination claims jumped by 28%, and retaliation charges—what lawyers call the hottest charge these days—jumped by 22% last year, from 27,000 to 33,000 claims. The EEOC does not have numbers yet for 2009.  View article here:  EEOC Flooded With Complaints.

The nation’s top civil rights attorney vowed Friday to step up enforcement of laws against housing bias, hate crimes, racially targeted predatory lending and other discriminatory acts in what he called a new era of “transformation and restoration.” You may view an article on Thomas Perez here:  Meet the new Civil Rights Attorney.

“One of the few women ever to write for Late Night with David Letterman, the author (a longtime V.F. contributor) remembers a hostile, sexually charged atmosphere. What’s to be done? Start by breaking late night’s all-male gag order.”  Letterman Show-Sexually Charged Atmosphere.

A former cashier for a big box retailer who has been wearing a “One nation under God” button on his work apron for more than a year has been fired, he says because of the religious reference.  The company claims that expressing such personal beliefs is simply not allowed.  “I’ve worn it for well over a year and I support my country and God,” Trevor Keezor said Tuesday. “I was just doing what I think every American should do, just love my country.”  Fired Over God Button?  This is an interesting case.  While Hawaii and federal law protects employees from discrimination based on religion, employers are permitted to control speech in the workplace, and arguably the button connotes more of a political statement than anything else.  Stay tuned.

The EEOC reports a surge in complaints of retaliation being filed with the EEOC.  Claims including a retaliation charge rose 23% in the year ended Sept. 30, 2008, to 32,690 — more than a third of all claims filed with the agency.  Claims that didn’t involve retaliation rose 12% in the same period.  View article here:  Retaliation Claims Increase.

Workplace violence is in the news again after Yale doctoral student, Annie Le, was found murdered and stuffed behind a wall at the research lab where she worked.  Police said the murder was an example of “workplace violence.”  The expert interviewed for this article  states that “workplace attackers usually don’t just explode . . . if you’re attuned to warning signs, perpetrators usually telegraph their motives.”  View the article here:  Workplace Violence Once Again Subject of Focus.

A federal COBRA subsidy law designed to make health insurance more affordable for laid-off workers has led to a doubling in the number of people who have opted to continue their former employer’s coverage.  Read the article on the increase in COBRA claims here: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2009-08-17-unemployed-insurance-cobra_N.htm

Three federal agencies recently issued, on August 19, 2009, a joint press release announcing the release of a new guidance to help businesses plan for and respond to the upcoming flu season.  The press release can be found here:  http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2009pres/08/20090819a.html Read more…

In California, a “Language Protection” Bill will be presented to Governor Schwarzenegger for his signature.  According to this article, the Bill, if passed, will protect the freedom of an individual to speak any language they choose in a business establishment.  The law will make it unlawful if a business “requires, limits or prohibits” the use of any language, except if doing so is a business necessity.

The Bill appears to protect the freedom of customers to speak a language other than English, in addition to employees.   Interestingly, the proposed Bill seems to mirror statutory protections already in place for employees/applicants that prohibit national origin discrimination and the EEOC’s extension of such prohibition to English-Only rules in the workplace.  You may view the article on the proposed Bill here:  Language Protection Bill Debated in California.

“In these troubled economic times, fixed fees for particular legal matters have appeal both for law firms and their corporate clients. We — a former general counsel of a major company and a current co-managing partner of a major firm — strongly believe that this is an idea whose time has come. For in-house counsel facing tremendous budgetary pressures, the fixed fee addresses the problems caused by the hourly rate, such as unpredictability, high costs divorced from actual value and, most importantly, the maddening law firm definition of “productivity” — defined as more lawyers and more hours per matter.”  \”Now is the Time for Fixed Fees.\”

Most everyone agrees that the law firm business model is dead, but there is little consensus on how to fix it.  \”Insipid and Inadequate\”.