All posts by Vicki

How to be a Christian Employee

Employee Rights,

Note: An edited version of this article ran in the July 27 edition of the Amarillo Sunday Globe-News. This is the whole column as originally written:

In this column last month, I tried to combine my legal expertise and my faith as I tackled the difficult topic of how to be a Christian employer. Click here for the column on being a Christian employer.

The most logical follow-up to last month’s column, which was written for owners and managers, seems to be to write about how to be an employee if you are a Christian. I want to explore practically and Biblically how a Christian employee should behave and if that is any different from the rest of the working world.

Most of us are in an employee role either to a boss or to our clients. The Bible has a lot to say about how we should play that servant role. Continue reading How to be a Christian Employee →

Religion in the Workplace

Discrimination

This newspaper features a “Faith” section every week. There are at least five Christian channels on our cable television. The Amarillo yellow pages directory contains at least 20 pages of church listings. Religion is alive and well in the Panhandle of Texas.

But is it appropriate to bring religion into your workplace? For many people, it is as natural as breathing to talk about, think about and pray about their faith and their struggles while at work as well as elsewhere.

But as a business owner or manager, you have to be very careful and knowledgeable about how to handle your employees’ and your own religious beliefs. While about 75% of Americans professed to be Christians in 2000, there are another 13% who said they are secular or nonreligious, and the rest practiced Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, agnosticism, atheism, Hinduism, Wiccan, etc.

Even if an employee professes to be a Christian, he or she could be involved in any one of the 38,000 Christian denominations worldwide that Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary identified in 2006. Many of these denominations have very different practices and traditions from your church. Just assuming that all of your employees believe the way that you believe is naïve and could be legally costly.

Continue reading Religion in the Workplace →

Hiring Teen Workers

Employee Rights, Hiring

Summer is coming and you may be thinking about hiring some teen workers under the age of 18. Here’s some lawyerly advice: Proceed with Caution.

 

There are lots of legal restrictions on hiring teens, which are still considered “child labor” by the Department of Labor. You need to review the basic rules on the Department of Labor website, www.dol.gov, such the limitations on the hours that 14- and 15-year-olds can work:

  • Non-school hours;
  • 3 hours in a school day;
  • 18 hours in a school week;
  • 8 hours on a non-school day;
  • 40 hours on a non-school week; and
  • hours between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. (except from June 1 through Labor Day, when the evening hours are extended to 9 p.m.)

If you are hiring a 16- or 17- year old, there are no limits on the hours that he can work. However, there are limits on the duties anyone under 18 can perform. He generally cannot work in any occupation considered hazardous, including construction jobs, warehousing jobs, public messenger jobs or jobs that require the use of power-driven machines, such as meat slicers, bakery equipment, power saws, etc.

Continue reading Hiring Teen Workers →