Gina Cobb (Nov. 20) and many other bloggers are appropriately angry about the prominent New York Democrat’s proposal to reintroduce draft conscription. I have one relatively small point to add, which is that no one who respects the English language should ever again refer to Congressman Rangel as “pro-labor”. Someone who proposes to take away the individual’s right to decide for himself or herself for whom to work, and at what calling, is an enemy of the rights of labor, not a friend. (Maybe “pro-union” still works, as a description.) More: Angry Bear.
Posts Tagged ‘workplace’
“In California Your Unlicensed Contractor May Really Be Your ‘Employee'”
For purposes of suing you, at least. That’s what happened to homeowner Glenn Brodeur, who hired his neighbor Ernesto Mendoza, an unlicensed roofing contractor, at a set fee to do the roofing work. “Mendoza arrived at Brodeur’s house with a gang of workmen, started on the project, and within a few hours fell off the roof and was seriously injured.” In the current state of California law, unlicensed contractors — but not licensed ones — have the right to sue homeowners in tort in such situations. (B. Scott Douglass, Mondaq.com, Nov. 1).
Taxpayer bill for dog food meal: $2.7 million
Not including defense attorney costs. Jorge Arvelo served spaghetti with a dog food sauce to Tennie Pierce at his firehouse as a prank, and alleged racial discrimination. The three firefighters behind the joke said it was just firehouse tomfoolery, but Pierce’s attorney found a professor willing to say otherwise: “The association of a black man and dog food resonates with the deep historical roots of slavery and the corresponding dehumanization,” said sociologist David Wellman, who further opined that “[Blacks] have a gyroscope that picks up hostile stuff that somebody else would not see as hostile.” The City Council voted 11-1 to settle for $2.7 million; it’s not their money, after all. Pierce also gets to take a year off on fully paid administrative leave, and then collect a full pension. The LA Fire Department is 47% minority. (Sandy Banks, “Black firefighter settles suit over racial prank”, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 9).
Note to Los Angeles residents: I’ll eat dog food and let firefighters laugh at me for doing so for a tenth that price.
Update, November 22: Mayor vetoes settlement in response to taxpayer outrage.
EEOC challenges Exxon’s pilot age limit
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued ExxonMobil last month over its policy of requiring pilots of its planes to retire at age 60. The federal agency prefers individualized assessments of age-related inability to handle the duties of the job — which in this case might mean that an employer would start the removal process for an elderly pilot only after a legally bulletproof file had been assembled documenting the pilot’s decline in capabilities.
Exxon Mobil spokesman Russ Roberts said the company’s policy addressed the issue of safety and was modeled after Federal Aviation Administration guidelines. He said the policy is long-standing and consistent, not arbitrary and discriminatory.
“Our pilots face the same challenges commercial pilots do flying large, complex, high-speed jets,” he said. “We told the EEOC that we would not change our safety practices in response to complaints filed by pilots.”
(Steve Quinn, “Suit Accuses Exxon of Age Discrimination”, AP/CBSNews.com, Sept. 23). At the Denver Post, columnist Al Lewis discusses this and other recent age-bias lawsuits (“Gray hair + pink slip = lawsuit”, Sept. 27). More on the subject: Oct. 19, etc.
Overtime-suit spam
Unsolicited email arrived a few hours ago from a return address of EmploymentRights@media-uplink.com with the message: “Do You Know Your Rights As An Employee? Are Your Work Rights Being Neglected? Are You being paid for: Overtime? Putting your uniform on or off? Time spent preparing for your shift? Attending safety meetings? Travel time and expenses?” The link, when clicked, led to this page at a domain entitled legalleadshost.com. Overtime and employee-classification suits have emerged as a highly lucrative field of practice for the plaintiff’s bar in recent years. “In December, a California jury awarded $172.3 million to Wal-Mart workers for missed meal breaks.” (Sophia Pearson and Margaret Cronin Fisk, “Wal-Mart Loses Pennsylvania Suit Over Missed Breaks”, Bloomberg, Oct. 12).
New Times column — age-bias law
My new column in the Times Online is up. First paragraph:
So now Britain has its own law banning employers from considering workers’ age in most job situations. If your experience follows ours in America, the results will include a range of unintended consequences, some of which will worsen the plight of the workers the law was meant to help.
(Walter Olson, “If the US experience is anything to go by, be sceptical of Britain’s new age-bias laws”, Times Online (U.K.), Oct. 18, newer link and reprint). I treated this subject at length in my 1997 book The Excuse Factory and did a USA Today opinion piece back then exploring some of the ways the law backfires against older workers. The new British law has been getting some attention in the States, in part because of the news item about the company that has banned office birthday cards as potentially ageist (Oct. 13) and the one about the recruiting agency (Oct. 17) that is barring use of any of a list of words including vibrant, dynamic, gravitas, ambitious, and hungry to describe potential employees.
Birthday cards actionable?
Perhaps not, but a UK insurance firm isn’t taking any chances. With new laws in place prohibiting age discrimination and age harassment, Alan & Thomas insurance brokers has barred the circulation of birthday cards signed by the entire staff, who occasionally write jokey statements about the perils of aging.
Julian Boughton, the firm’s managing director, said: “The new rules outlawing age discrimination are a potential minefield for both employers and employees. Every business should be taking action. Often employees don’t realise the implications of what they are writing.”
A member of staff said: “I think it’s stupid really. People like to joke about other people getting older, and it’s only a bit of fun.”
The Employment Equality (Age) regulations 2006 came into force on Oct 1, prohibiting direct or indirect harassment or victimisation on the grounds of age.
Neil Gouldson, an employment law specialist at the Manchester-based firm Rowe Cohen, said: “Gags in birthday cards about people being ‘over the hill’ will need to be curbed.”
(Richard Savill, “Firm halts office cards for fear of ‘ageist’ comments”, Telegraph (UK), Oct. 12) (h/t F.R.).
“Illegal immigrants sue Wendy’s”
“A group of illegal immigrants who worked for Wendy’s International Inc. is suing the restaurant chain because the company fired them after discovering it had missed a deadline for joining a federal program that would have helped them attain legal status.” (Rasha Madkour, AP/Houston Chronicle, Oct. 6).
More: the restaurant company blames a series of “mistakes made by others” that began before it bought the Cafe Express chain. In particular, Houston-based business law firm Boyar & Miller failed to take steps needed to enroll workers in the program. Commenter David Schwartz points out:
It might be worth noting that the employees *paid* to partipicate in the program. Surely if I pay my employer for legal services and I don’t get them, either my employer or their law firm is at fault, no?
Isn’t missing a filing deadline a classic example of attorney malpractice?
Terminating bad teachers
John Stossel maps out the New York City process (“How To Fire an Incompetent Teacher”, Reason, October, leads to a PDF).
Update: Judge reduces FedEx harassment award
Updating our Jun. 5 post: noting that the conduct sued over “was mostly just offensive name-calling,” a judge in Alameda County, Calif. last month reduced the damages in two Lebanese-American men’s harassment-on-the-job lawsuit against Federal Express from an eye-popping $61 million to a mere $12.4 million. The latter number is presumably not as unreasonable even if it, too, might give off an air of having been pulled from a hat (Matthew Hirsch, “Calif. Judge Slashes $61 Million FedEx Verdict”, The Recorder, Sept. 14).