“Why France Has So Many 49-Employee Companies” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Onboard-recorder trucker mandate is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

FMLA leave meets ADA “reasonable accommodation” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

According to the American Farm Bureau Federation (PDF),

For approximately a decade, activists have attempted to pass legislation amending the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to restrict the ability of youth under the age of 16 to work in agriculture. The legislation has never been scheduled for a vote or even a hearing, and the DOL-proposed rule change is [was] apparently an effort to restrict youth employment in agriculture through regulation.

If it seems impossibly extreme to forbid 15-year-olds from feeding chickens at a neighboring farm owned by their aunt, be aware that many groups organized around the fine-sounding mission of ending “child labor” would like to institute bans that go even further. For example, an NGO by the name of Global March Against Child Labor (represented in Washington, D.C. here) supported the DoL rules and declares itself “of the view that child labour in agriculture should not be allowed in any part of the world and in any form- whether as family labour or as hired labour.”

P.S. For more pro-ban sentiment, see this piece by AP labor correspondent Sam Hananel stenographizing the views of groups like Human Rights Watch.

Good news for farm families is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

More: From Hans Bader, why it persists despite failure — in education, accreditation rules are one important driver — and why trainers have been known to encourage employers in mistaken beliefs (such as that public employees can and should be disciplined for criticizing affirmative action policies) that are at variance with court holdings.

“Diversity Training Doesn’t Work” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Related: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signs bill repealing duplicative damages law passed by his Democratic predecessors, thus contradicting the accepted narrative in which the scope of available damages in job-bias suits is supposed to be revisable only in an upward direction.

Lilly Ledbetter back in news is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

More: David Harsanyi at Human Events (quoting my February piece).

“James Bovard: The Wrong Way to Help the Disabled” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

Labor and employment roundup is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“Reassignment as reasonable accommodation: mandatory or not?” is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system

“I’ve lately been reading Mark Twain’s book Following The Equator, and I came across a passage in which he talks about employment recommendations. What he says immediately made me think of you — how employment law has changed!”

The first Bearer that applied, waited below and sent up his recommendations. That was the first morning in Bombay. We read them over; carefully, cautiously, thoughtfully. There was not a fault to find with them – except one; they were all from Americans. Is that a slur? If it is, it is a deserved one. In my experience, an American’s recommendation of a servant is not usually valuable. We are too goodnatured a race; we hate to say the unpleasant thing; we shrink from speaking the unkind truth about a poor fellow whose bread depends upon our verdict; so we speak of his good points only, thus not scrupling to tell a lie – a silent lie – for in not mentioning his bad ones we as good as say he hasn’t any. The only difference that I know of between a silent lie and a spoken one is, that the silent lie is a less respectable one than the other. And it can deceive, whereas the other can’t – as a rule. We not only tell the silent lie as to a servant’s faults, but we sin in another way: we overpraise his merits; for when it comes to writing recommendations of servants we are a nation of gushers. And we have not the Frenchman’s excuse. In France you must give the departing servant a good recommendation; and you must conceal his faults; you have no choice. If you mention his faults for the protection of the next candidate for his services, he can sue you for damages; and the court will award them, too; and, moreover, the judge will give you a sharp dressing-down from the bench for trying to destroy a poor man’s character, and rob him of his bread. I do not state this on my own authority, I got it from a French physician of fame and repute – a man who was born in Paris, and had practiced there all his life. And he said that he spoke not merely from common knowledge, but from exasperating personal experience.

(& State Bar of Michigan News)

Mark Twain on employment reference law is a post from Overlawyered - Chronicling the high cost of our legal system