But blessed are your eyes, because they see, and your ears, because they hear. Amen, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.
Hear then the parable of the sower. The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word of the kingdom without understanding it, and the evil one comes and steals away what was sown in his heart. The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time. When some tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he immediately falls away. The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears the word, but then worldly anxiety and the lure of riches choke the word and it bears no fruit. But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.
The contemporary American workplace is susceptible to numerous federal, state, and local laws that impose strict obligations on businesses (e.g., wage and hour legislation, nondiscrimination legislation, etc.). Most companies, especially smaller businesses, tend not to know the scope of such obligations and, consequently, frequently (albeit inadvertently) violate what the law states. These violations can result in costly lawsuits, and also civil and criminal penalties. In my experience of being a defense attorney in addition to being a plaintiff’s lawyer, the most frequent employment law mistakes done by corporations are the subsequent (in no particular order):
- Misclassifying employees as independent contractors. Generally speaking, only workers who operate their particular separate corporations are “independent contractors.” Few workers meet this test; the truth is, most personnel are considered “employees” for the law, this means they’re eligible to the complete variety of workplace protections.
- Misclassifying non-exempt staff members as exempt. Generally speaking, all personnel are eligible for minimum wage and overtime pay, unless they’re “exempt” under state and federal law. The exemption rules (e.g., for executive, administrative, and professional employees) only apply in limited circumstances, however; therefore, many workers that are claimed by businesses to get “exempt” actually have entitlement to minimum wage and/or overtime pay.
- Not complying with state wage payment legal guidelines. i.e. New York imposes several specific rules regarding how businesses be forced to pay their personnel. These rules include providing new workers with written notice of these rate of pay and regular pay date; prohibiting deductions from wages unless to the employee’s benefit and authorized in writing; requiring written contracts for commissioned salespersons; and providing terminated employees with written notice of the last day’s work, their last day’s benefits, and their right to make an application for unemployment benefits.
- Not owning a personnel handbook. A laborer handbook is a vital tool for effective employer-employee relations. It notifies workers of the company’s values, policies, and procedures; promotes compliance with labor and employment legal guidelines; so it helps create an orderly, efficient, and transparent workplace.
- Not documenting personnel job performance. A well-managed organization clearly communicates its employees’ duties and responsibilities (e.g., through written position descriptions), trains and supervises workers to be sure they are meeting these requirements, and gives regular, objective, consistent feedback (e.g., through written evaluations and, where necessary, disciplinary actions). A deficiency of accurate, complete, contemporaneous documentation can cause liability in case of a case by a staff member.
- Not training supervisors regarding EEO legislation. Federal, state, and local equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws and regulations prohibit businesses from taking adverse actions against employees (e.g., demotion, termination) for reasons not associated with an employee’s job performance, including those determined by an employee’s race, color, sex, age, disability, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and marital status ( to mention the commonest “protected characteristics”), plus retaliation for an employee’s good faith complaints of discrimination. It is imperative that supervisors learn the way to manage staff members without violating (or appearing to violate) these laws and regulations.
- Not providing reasonable accommodations for disabled staff members. Most EEO legislation prohibit businesses from taking adverse actions against employees according to certain protected characteristics, but disability discrimination legal guidelines also impose an affirmative obligation on businesses to “reasonably accommodate” disabled personnel in order to assist them to perform the primary functions of the jobs. Such accommodations can sometimes include restructuring job duties, modifying work schedules, or providing assistive devices. Businesses must give a disabled laborer with needed accommodations unless doing this would cause an “undue hardship” for the company (e.g., very costly, too disruptive).
- Not obtaining releases from terminated personnel. When terminating a worker, businesses need to get a release that waives the employee’s potential legal claims against the enterprise. The simplest way to get a release is in exchange for an offer of severance (where appropriate). Generally, organizations are not essential to pay for severance to employees (unless essential to an employment contract or perhaps a collective bargaining agreement). If they opt to do this (e.g., associated with layoffs), they ought to require employees to sign a release in substitution for the payment.
- Not protecting confidential business information. Every company depends upon certain vital, often confidential, specifics of its organization operations, including trade secrets, marketing and advertising practices, and customer and client lists. Access to this information must be tied to employees with a “need to know” and may be protected by appropriate non-disclosure, non-compete, and/or non-solicitation agreements (depending on the nature of the information along with the employee’s position).
- Not consulting a certified employment law attorney. Perhaps the only most crucial point to take away from this discussion is always that businesses should consult an experienced employment lawyer to ensure they are in compliance with all the increasingly numerous and complex laws and regulations that carpet work just like a minefield. Large companies most often have attorneys and hr professionals within the company to help them in this field. Small- and medium-size businesses often tend not to. Their biggest mistake is attempting to navigate this minefield automatically.
So you? Exactly what are your top mistakes made in employment law?
About the writer: Stacia Abner, Esq. writes for labor law training courses, her personal blog, where she discusses her experience as an attorney assisting workers and corporations in coping with the elements of employment law.
A CGI “Animated History of Poland” produced for the Polish pavilion at EXPO 2010 in Shanghai.
Animated History of Poland [FULL VERSION] from styczek on Vimeo.
The 3D stereo “Animated History of Poland” was prepared by Platige Image animators and directed by Tomek Bagiński. It is one of a few productions done by Platige Image for EXPO exhibition.
Platige and Tomek Bagiński also produced a CGI trailer for one of the world’s top games, Witcher 2, Assassins of Kings.
The activity at the Polish American Writers & Editors Facebook page has been wonderful. There are links to book and poetry reviews and blogs, opportunities for writers, excellent analysis and recommendations. I highly recommend that anyone who writes or loves to read, or who has an interest in writing become a member of this group.
Some recent/not-so-recent material:
Andy Golebiowski notes Rita Cosby’s book about her father’s participation in the Polish Underground during WWII is now in paperback and close to becoming a bestseller.
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Linda Ciulik Wisniewski recommends Off Kilter: A Woman’s Journey to Peace With Scoliosis, Her Mother, and Her Polish Heritage by Linda C. Wisniewski.
Even before she was diagnosed with scoliosis at thirteen, Linda C. Wisniewski felt off kilter. Born to an emotionally abusive father and long-suffering mother in the Polish Catholic community of upstate New York, Linda twisted herself into someone always trying to please. Balance would elude her until she learned to stretch her Self as well as her spine. Only by accepting her physical deformity, her emotionally unavailable mother, and her heritage would she finally find a life that fit.
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Krysia Styrna points to Polish Writing which features Polish literature in translation. Recently linked translations include Kordian by Juliusz Słowacki as translated by Gerard T. Kapolka and available on-line through Scribd, and Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk as translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
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Dr. John Guzlowski discusses the New England Review’s article by Ellen Hinsey on the plane crash that killed President Lech Kaczynski and others last year in the Katyn Forest. The article talks extensively and sympathetically about the effect of the crash on Poland. See Hinsey – Death in the Forest.
He notes Polish American writer Danusha Goska is travelling in Poland and posting Facebook and blog updates about her travels at Bieganski the Blog.
Also noted, Daiva Markelis powerful book White Field, Black Sheep: A Lithuanian-American Life published by the Univ of Chicago Press about growing up Lithuanian-American. Her experiences in many ways parallel those of people who grew up Polish-American and the children of DPs. Read her recent interview at The Smoking Poet, Talking to Daiva Markelis
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Danuta Hinc provides a preview of her newest work, a short story entitled In the Forest of Angels. The story is inspired by real events and all the characters in the story are based on real people — her grandparents, mother, and herself.
Pol-Am writer Oriana Ivy continues her writing (absolutely fantastic and a regular read — an inspired and inquisitive poet) with Persephone and Aphrodite. There are many levels, but in short, the process of leaving Poland and coming to America, trauma, finding, and rebirth. She begins with her poem Eurydice In Milwaukee and concludes with Persephone’s Kitchen.
This poem is not about my loss of Warsaw so much as about my loss of America. I mean the idealized, imaginary America in my mind after I arrived in real America. I was seventeen. That combination – loss of both Poland and America – was to be the first in the series of my “Persephone experiences.” (Eurydice can be seen as a version of Persephone.)
In my early teens, in Warsaw, I fell in love with Greek mythology. I thought it was possible to choose your own special goddess. A fierce young intellectual, I longed for Athena at my side – Athena the super-intelligent, with her brilliant strategies and unfailing guidance and protection of heroes. Now and then I also longed for Aphrodite to lend me her charms and help me in matters of love, but with the understanding that this was a secondary goddess. As my personal goddess, I chose Athena.
Soon enough I learned that you do not choose your god or goddess. Life (or call it fate, or circumstances), in combination with your deep self, chooses for you. Past the age of seventeen and a half, the only goddess I identified with was Persephone…
There is tons more of course… all carrying you into a world of writing set apart, yet reflecting who we are in all its rootedness, shadows, and splendor.
Interfaith Worker Justice points to a group of retailers who are either refusing to negotiate with workers or are proactively dragging worker organizers (on hunger strike) and worker advocates into court to in an attempt to block advocacy and worker organization.
Seems to me that we become less and less free when big corporations can so blithely attack the right of people to freely gather, or to espouse a cause. Something about that in some old document in Washington, but who remembers that anymore. First they came for the organizers, then…
In the first instance, the parent company of several chains, SuperValu, including a chain local to me, Save-A-Lot Stores, filed a suit against organizers and Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha (Center of Workers United in Struggle — CTUL), IWJ’s affiliate in the Minneapolis-St. Paul. The workers had sought the Center’s assistance because as they state:
Every night, we are surrounded by food as we clean the grocery stores in our community. Yet often we cannot afford to put enough food on the table for our own families.
With the help of CTUL, workers who clean Cub Foods stores have been trying for over a year to engage Cub Foods in a dialogue about fair wages and working conditions. Also with the help of CTUL, workers went on Hunger Strike for 12 days beginning at the end of May, in a further effort to seek a dialogue. That hunger strike action resulted in SuperValu suing CTUL and its organizers personally.
Please pray for the workers and organizers, sign this on-line petition to support them, and if you are able, make a donation to assist in fighting off this assault on the Center and its organizers.
I Stand with CTUL for Fair Wages and Working Conditions for Retail Cleaning Workers in the Twin Cities
I am concerned about the many reports of human rights violations taking place in retail cleaning. When retail cleaning workers earn sub-poverty wages and have increasingly stressful workloads, this has a negative impact on our entire community. Therefore, I stand firmly with the Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha (CTUL) in calling on major retail chains (including Cub Foods, SuperValu, Target, and Lunds & Byerly’s) to partner with CTUL to create a code of conduct that guarantees fair wages and benefits for the workers who clean their stores.
Meanwhile at Walmart, work for change is building momentum because of the voices of workers and their advocates.
Walmart Associates throughout the country are standing up for change at Walmart – and IWJ is standing beside them as they work to make a difference in their stores and their company. Momentum is building – both for the Associate-led Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart) and for Making Change at Walmart, a campaign that stands in solidarity with Associates claiming the respect they deserve.
No single employer in America has a larger impact on employment standards than Walmart. That’s why stopping Walmart’s race to the bottom is essential. From my point-of-view, the race to the bottom is becoming pervasive in our culture. We all want faster, less expensive, and more convenient, and the thing that makes that happen is a push to lower wages, eliminate benefits, and work people until they drop. The savings have to come from somewhere, so we no longer manufacture in our country, and the workers who are left have to pay the price for a better bottom line. Sadly, we also do it to our neighbors. Should our neighbor be a Union member who enjoys a better standard of living we say: ‘Why should he/she have it, take it away,’ and in due course we all loose what little we have.
If you are concerned in seeing change happen at Walmart, and at fighting against the race to the bottom, be sure to like the Making Change at Walmart Facebook page.
Begin with prayer for workers, and ask for strength to speak out. Speak up for worker rights. Ask that contractor who comes to your door whether his/her workers are employees. You would think that when they tell a worker to nail shingles to your roof that worker would be an employee. Unfortunately, most times employers illegally claim that workers are “independent.” Really!!! The boss is telling them to do something, what shingles to nail, how to do it, where to do it, when to do it, but they are “independent.” Ask your local restauranteur whether the people chopping food in the back room are paid fairly. Ask the chain market manager whether his/her workers are paid properly and have benefits. Then vote with your feet and dollars supporting only those who do right by their workers and your community.
Workers can find more information on minimum employment standards, and can file complaints at the U.S. Department of Labor’s We Can Help/Podemos ayudar webpage.
When did we clothe you, feed you, dress your wounds, visit you? Whenever you did it to these, the least of my brothers (Matthew 25:40).
From Christian Newswire: The Second Annual Coptic Solidarity Conference. Offer your prayers tonight for the the Coptic community and the fulfillment of their conference’s objectives.
The second Annual Coptic Solidarity Conference will be held on Friday and Saturday July 8-9 under the main theme of “Will Religious and Ethnic Minorities Pay the Price of the ‘Arab Spring.’ The Christian Copts are the native ethnic religious community of Egypt, descendants from ancient Egyptians. They number around 15 millions, including a large Diaspora with more than half a million strong community of American Copts.
The Copts have experienced persecutions throughout their history and lately have been subject to acts of aggression and discrimination in Egypt at the hands of extremists and Jihadists. Since the revolt in Egypt brought down the previous authoritarian regime of Husni Mubarak, the Coptic community is facing an uncertain future. The Military Council is slow in implementing true democratic reforms and, even worse, they face the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood dominated Government in the near future.
Coptic Solidarity International is an INGO seeking the support of the Coptic community in Egypt and the protection of its fundamental human rights. It raises awareness within the international community about the Coptic historical and current issues via educational and informational activities.
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Coptic leaders from North America, Europe and Egypt will speak on the conditions of the community in the Middle East and in the Diaspora.
The key objective of this two-day conference is to understand the implications of the current upheaval in the middle East and to offer present and future support to the Copts, and other minorities, as they go through this difficult period.
In February 2011, His Grace Bishop Serapion of the Coptic Orthodox Church discussed the vision and dream for a new Egypt
As post-Mubarak Egypt stands at a crossroads, Coptic Orthodox bishop His Grace Bishop Serapion is certain his hopes and vision for the new Egypt are shared not only by his homeland’s Christians, but lovers of freedom and human rights everywhere.
“While we have a deep concern about the direction of the country, we still have strong hope and great dreams,” HG Bishop Serapion said Sunday afternoon at the Los Angeles Convention Center in an address about Copts’ vision and hope for building the new Egypt. The event, presented by the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles, Southern California and Hawaii, over which HG Bishop Serapion is bishop, honored Coptic Christians in Egypt who have been killed in religiously motivated attacks by extremists since 2000. Up to 1,500 people were expected to attend the event.
The event aimed to raise awareness of the plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt, where they comprise 10 percent of that nation’s 79 million people. The Copts are the largest Christian population in the Middle East. Approximately 40,000 Copts live in Greater Los Angeles, where there are 30 Coptic Orthodox churches.
Following the Jan. 25 revolution in Egypt, Copts’ concerns have deepened for the country’s direction, as pockets of violence have erupted against them. On Feb. 20, Daoud Boutros, a Coptic priest from Shotb near the southern Egyptian city of Assiut, was stabbed to death in his apartment. Father Daoud was a mentor of HG Bishop Serapion. That same day, Egyptian military forces began destroying fences protecting ancient Coptic monasteries, leaving the monks and monasteries vulnerable to attacks. On Feb. 23, military forces opened fire on monks and young people, wounding many severely.
In the past 11 years Coptic Christians have suffered severe persecution and martyrdom at the hands of Islamic extremists, including the New Year’s Day suicide bombing of Saint Mark and Pope Peter Coptic Orthodox Church in Alexandria, which killed 24 Copts and injured approximately 100. Extremists gunned down six Coptic youths in Nag Hammadi in a Mass on Jan. 7, 2010. Extremists also killed 21 Copts in the village of Al Kosheh Jan. 21, 2000.
HG Bishop Serapion offered prayers for the martyrs and observed a moment of silence for those who died in recent weeks during political demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. He echoed the Rev. Martin Luther King’s call to use non-violent means in advocating for a fair society for all Egyptians.
“What is the direction the society will move? Are we moving toward a state where every citizen has equal rights, irrespective of gender or religion, or a religious state where some people are considered as second-class citizens?” he asked. “We are at a crossroads in our society. We must focus on freedom, justice and equality, irrespective of the name of the person.”
Prompted by biblical and theological convictions, to achieve this dream of equality, Copts must wage non-violent struggle, HG Bishop Serapion said. The struggle entails rejecting injustice, exposing the evils of discrimination and standing up for Christians’ rights through the power of the truth, not the perpetuation of violence. Copts aim to cooperate with people of goodwill, regardless of religion, and will remain steadfast in their struggle “until our dream becomes reality,” he said.
“We must be ready to accept sacrifices,” he said. “Martyrs will fall and people will be wounded. This is the price of freedom and justice.”
In follow-up to an earlier post from October 2010 —
From the IRS: IRS Identifies Organizations that Have Lost Tax-Exempt Status – Special Steps Announced to Help Revoked Groups
The Internal Revenue Service announced that it has released a listing of approximately 275,000 organizations that under the law have automatically lost their tax-exempt status because they have not filed annual reports as legally required for the past three years. If an organization appears on the list of auto-revoked organizations it is because IRS records indicate the organization has a filing requirement and has not filed the required returns or notices for 2007, 2008 and 2009.
The IRS has issued guidance on how organizations can apply for reinstatement of their tax-exempt status, including retroactive reinstatement. In addition, the IRS announced transition relief for certain smaller tax-exempt groups – those with annual gross receipts of $50,000 or less for 2010 and eligible to file Form 990-N, the e-Postcard. The relief allows eligible revoked groups to gain retroactive tax-exempt status and pay a reduced application fee of $100 rather than the typical $400 fee. More information, including FAQs and a Fact Sheet, can be found on the IRS website.