Monthly Archives: October 2008

Health Care Dilemmas for Employers

Benefits

Several items about employer-provided group health care benefits have crossed my desk lately. In light of the presidential election next week, all of these items could be addressed soon under a new administration. But it is important to understand the scope of the problem that group health insurance has become for employers.

The rising cost of health care benefits is the issue that will have the biggest impact on the workplace in the years ahead, according to a recent survey of human resource professionals by the Society for Human Resource Management. The HR professionals surveyed believe that health care costs not only have the biggest impact on the bottom line but will affect our global competitiveness.

The national concern over rising health care premiums is echoed in Texas for good reason, according to an October 23 article in the Dallas Morning News:

Texans earn more than they did eight years ago, but their health insurance premiums have jumped six times faster than their wages and gone up faster than the national average, according to a study to be released today.

In its study, “Premiums versus Paychecks,” Families USA, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit consumer advocate, found that health care premiums rose 86.8 percent from 2000 to 2007 – from $6,638 to $12,403 – while median earnings rose just 15 percent – going from $23,032 to $26,484.

“[Texas] earnings were actually a little better than the rest of the nation [14.5 percent], but health care premiums increased faster,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA.

In my part of the country, those rising health care costs are causing many employers to drop group health care coverage completely as a benefit. Only high paying white-collar jobs, government jobs and the largest employers in the area still consistently provide group health care benefits, and many of them are requiring their employees to share in the cost of the premiums.

Apparently that trend is not just local. Continue reading Health Care Dilemmas for Employers →

Are You a Good Boss?

Management

American employees are unimpressed with their bosses. Earlier this month, Randstad USA, a staffing company, released a survey of 2337 people in which half of the employees reported that they do not respect their bosses. Only half believe their bosses are competent. Less than 30 percent see their bosses as coaches, motivators or mentors.

All of this means that employees don’t feel motivated to work harder. Less than half of those surveyed said they would volunteer to work extra time to impress their bosses. Only 43 percent believe that their supervisors would listen to new ideas. So do you think these employees ever work late or suggest improvements in the workplace?

This survey got me to thinking about what makes a good boss. Why does that matter to an employment attorney? In my experience, those of my clients who understand about being great leaders get sued much less often. Every manager makes mistakes, but those who take the attitude that “my employees are just damn lucky to have a job” seem to invite expensive and unproductive litigation into their lives.

I have an old (1984) article from Nation’s Business that still provides the best explanation of what it takes to be a great boss: Continue reading Are You a Good Boss? →

Update Your Job Descriptions

Discrimination

When the new Americans with Disability Act (“ADA”) amendments go into effect on January 1, 2009, millions more disabled Americans (or those perceived as disabled) are expected to be protected by the law than have been helped since the 1991 law was enacted. Click here for more information about these amendments. This of course means that your odds as an employer of being sued for disability discrimination will increase.

As a business owner or manager, if you aren’t completely comfortable about how to apply the ADA in your workplace, now is the time to prepare before the January 1 deadline. There are many ways to prepare, including training all of your supervisors on working with and accommodating disabled employees and developing internal procedures for dealing with requests for accommodation. You should review the company interviewing procedures to assure yourself that no one is asking about an applicant’s prior worker’s compensation history or other loaded questions. You should also be certain that medical exams are being given to all persons to whom you offer jobs (or to none), so that it is clear you are not trying to weed out disabled applicants.

One important preparation that you should undertake today and complete by the end of 2008 is a review of all of your job descriptions. I can hear every manager reading that last sentence expel a heavy sigh. I know that writing job descriptions is a pain, but it is the single most important piece of evidence during a disability discrimination case. Continue reading Update Your Job Descriptions →

Employer Faces Child Labor Criminal Charges

Employee Rights, Hiring

Note: This Employer’s Advocate column was originally published in the Amarillo Globe-News on Sunday, October 12, 2008.

This newspaper reported last month that the owner and the managers of the nation’s largest kosher meat-packing plant (Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa) were criminally charged with more than 9000 individual counts apiece for employing children younger than 16 to handle dangerous equipment such as power saws and meat grinders. The children were also exposed to hazardous chemicals, according to the charges.

To assure that your business and you personally never get into that kind of criminal trouble, you have to educate yourself on the child labor laws.

A common trap that employers fall into with workers under 18 is to allow them to frequently drive on the job. No employee under 17 may drive a motor vehicle on public roads as part of his job. That means that you can’t use a 16-year-old to even run to the office supply store.

If your employee is 17, she can drive on the job only during daylight hours, only if she has completed a state approved driver’s education course and has no moving violations on her record at the time of hire, always wears a seatbelt and only if she spends no more than 20 percent of her time during any one workweek driving on company business.

There are other traps in the child labor laws, such as restrictions on allowing teens to work in fast-food restaurants near the meat slicers. Also, some states have even stricter laws than the federal law outlined here.

So here are the general child labor laws that you must follow: Continue reading Employer Faces Child Labor Criminal Charges →

What Every Supervisor Must Know

Discrimination, Management, Training,

Most employee lawsuits are caused by the actions of a first-line supervisor. In other words, that woman that you just promoted from cashier to assistant manager is the one most likely to get your company sued by a disgruntled employee or former employee. Why? Because the first-line supervisor has the most day-to-day contact with your employees. And during that contact, the first-line supervisor may make racist comments, forget to accommodate the disabled, show favoritism to those of his/her own religion, or make an employee work “off the clock”.

Remember that your lowest-ranking supervisor still represents “the company” and can make your business liable for discrimination, retaliation, compensation errors and other legal violations.

So from a preventative viewpoint, the selection and training of a new supervisor involves much more than just taking your hardest-working employees and giving them a raise and the keys to the storeroom.  Here are some of the things to consider when promoting an employee to a supervisory role: Continue reading What Every Supervisor Must Know →

Risks of Going to Trial

Discrimination, Litigation

You’ve heard it before. Ninety-five percent of lawsuits settle before they are tried. Knowing this, doesn’t it make sense to study settlement and trial outcomes to see if settlement is usually a good idea? Some new research did just that and found that plaintiffs in lawsuits, such as the employee in a discrimination claim, who turn down a settlement offer often do much worse at trial than if they had taken amount the defendant was offering.

A new study in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies found that 61% of plaintiffs who gambled on going to trial were disappointed with the outcome because they received a smaller award than the amount they had been offered to settle before trial. The average settlement offer was $48,700 and the average award at trial was only $43,000 in the more than 2000 cases decided in California between 2002 and 2005 that were included in the research.

It was an error for defendants to go to trial instead of paying a settlement demand in 24% of the cases reviewed. Unfortunately for those defendants that chose to go to trial, the price of that mistake was high. In those cases, the plaintiff’s average settlement demand was $770,900 but the average verdict was $1.9 million, meaning that $1.1 million could have been saved in those cases if the defendant had settled. Don’t forget that these verdicts occurred in California, so they don’t reflect conservative Panhandle jury awards, but the percentages are worth thinking about if your company is defending a lawsuit.

The study also looked specifically at employment law cases. Continue reading Risks of Going to Trial →

Test Your Employment Law Knowledge

Compensation, Discrimination, Personnel Policies,

Just for fun today (if you are like me and have no life!), test your knowledge of federal and Texas employment law. If you manage people in the workplace in Texas, this is the kind of information you should know off the top of your head. Give yourself about 10 minutes to answer these questions, then click on the answer page and see how you did.

  1. What is “employment at will” and why is it important?
  2. True or false: A “contract employee” is someone who works full-time for you but for whom you do not have to pay payroll taxes nor report as an employee.
  3. True of false: To prevent violence in the workplace, you should check your applicant’s criminal arrest record.
  4. Age discrimination claims can be filed by an employee who is ____ years of age or older.
  5. True or false: if an applicant is mentally ill, you don’t have to hire that applicant.
  6. At what age can you make an employee retire?
  7. True or false: The company can be liable if a customer sexually harasses its employee.
  8. How many people does a company have to employ before the Family and Medical Leave Act applies to that company? ______ employees.
  9. What is required to legally deduct anything other than payroll taxes from an employee’s paycheck?
  10. You can hold an employee’s final paycheck until he turns in : (check all that apply)   ____ uniforms; _____ company credit cards; _____ tools and other company equipment; ____ keys to company facilities; _____ all money owed to the company for salary advances, benefits, etc.
  11. How many days do you have to get an employee’s final paycheck to him in Texas if he has been fired?  ____ days.
  12. What is the current minimum wage? $_____ per hour. What will the minimum wage be on July 24, 2009? $ _____ per hour.
  13. True or false: An employer must prove that the employee committed “misconduct” if the employer wants to avoid an award of unemployment benefits to a fired employee.
  14. True or false: An employee who was fired for poor performance (just couldn’t do the job correctly) has committed “misconduct” so that she won’t receive unemployment benefits.
  15. How many employees do you have to have before you are liable under the federal and state discrimination laws, such as the laws prohibiting sexual harassment or disability discrimination? Continue reading Test Your Employment Law Knowledge →