Archive for August, 2008
Employees Required to Prevent ID Theft
Friday, August 29th, 2008A CVS pharmacy employee threw prescription forms in the dumpster behind the store in Houston. A Radio Shack worker in Corpus Christi dumped customer credit applications. EZPAWNS employees throughout Texas threw away customers’ bank statements. And the Levelland police found more than 4000 customer records in the garbage containers behind Select Physical Therapy. These were [...]
Common Overtime Mistakes
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008Note: This article appeared first in the Amarillo Sunday Globe-News on August 24, 2008.
One of the trickiest areas of employment law that every employer has to learn to handle well is the overtime law.
The Fair Labor Standards Act is not at all intuitive, so if you don’t know the specifics of it, you need to [...]
Employee Acknowledgment Form
Friday, August 22nd, 2008If you haven’t discovered the Texas Workforce Commission’s book Especially for Texas Employers, you are missing out on an invaluable and free resource to help you avoid costly legal mistakes in managing your employees. You can get a hard copy of the book at Panhandle Workforce Solutions at 1206 W. 7th Street in Amarillo. There [...]
E-mail Dangers
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008Just because e-mail is the most common method of communicating in the business world these days does not mean that it is a benign form of communication. E-mail is frequently used by employees to harass, slander, stalk, insult, and discriminate against coworkers. If you tolerate the use of your company e-mail systems to send pornographic, [...]
Cell Phone Policy
Friday, August 15th, 2008I love my smartphone, which acts as my phone, my calendar, my to do list, my address book, my e-mail server, etc. My clients know that my cell phone is always on and that they can call me anytime of the day or night. I took client calls while on the Washington, D.C. metro system [...]
The Myth of Contract Labor
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008My clients sometimes fall for the myth of “contract labor”, which is about as real as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster. The Texas Workforce Commission’s mythbusters explain it this way:
“Contract labor” may be the most widely used misnomer in business today. The issue is really whether a given worker is an employee or an [...]
Checking An Applicant’s Past Employers
Friday, August 8th, 2008One of the crucial parts of hiring a new employee is calling each past employer that the applicant discloses to find out what kind of employee the applicant has been during his career. It is true that some former employers won’t give out specific information about past employees, mainly because their employment attorneys have advised [...]
Policy Manual Promises can be Exploited
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008Does your company have an employee policy manual that you borrowed from another company, found on the internet, or wrote yourself? A recent federal appeals court opinion is a cautionary tale for those companies that have not had an employment law expert draft or review their employee manual.
The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held [...]
Happiness
Friday, August 1st, 2008Layoffs Can Lead to Lawsuits
Friday, August 1st, 2008The Department of Labor released new unemployment figures today. Nationwide, the unemployment rate is 5.7%. That is the highest it has been in 4 years. The DOL found that the manufacturing, construction and retail industries were seeing lots of layoffs, while education and health care are still growth industries.
In the Panhandle of Texas, the unemployment [...]