Author: Jaclyn West

Promotion and Self-Promotion

Litigation Value: No liability to Dunder Mifflin/Sabre, but plenty of room for improvement in behavior, as always. In the second week of Season 7 of The Office, Sabre miraculously escaped without an obvious lawsuit. For this shocking development, I’m inclined to credit the fact that Michael Scott spent most of the episode locked in the […]

Individual Liability for Wage and Hour Claims

by Kara E. Shea I recently participated in hosting a Wage and Hour Virtual Summit webinar. Wage and hour compliance — overtime, work-time issues, exempt status — is always a lively topic and typically results in lots of questions and feedback. This time around, most of the feedback surrounded remarks I made about individual liability […]

Work Relationships That Change the World: What’s Love-Love Got to Do with It?

Group Publisher of Employment Law at M. Lee Smith Tony Kessler reviews Tommy Spaulding’s book It’s Not Just Who You Know, finding the author offers an insightful look into the five different levels of relationships. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, blogs, and Skype, most of us have cyber-lists filled to the brim with friends these […]

Tippling in the Barrel of Untruth: How Not to Handle a Termination

By Stephen Acker and Joel Henderson Four years ago in Ottawa, the Federal Canadian Government nipped a nascent spending scandal in the bud when it fired two employees of the Canadian Department of Public Works, Douglas Tipple and David Rotor. Tipple successfully grieved his termination before the Public Service Labour Relations Board, winning the largest […]

Hot List: New York Times Bestselling Paperback Business Books

The following is a list of the bestselling paperback business books as ranked by the New York Times on September 27 1. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (P.S.) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. A maverick scholar and a journalist apply economic theory to everything from cheating sumo […]

Words of Wisdom

Each week, I sit down at my computer to write. Sometimes I’ve been tossing an idea around in my head for the better part of the week and the words just flow. Other times, I’m racking my brain for something I feel is worthy of writing about. In one of those moments when the latter […]

Brawl in the Family

Litigation Value: Not much; yet. Kicking off Season 7, tonight’s premiere teaches us a valuable lesson — the perils of nepotism in the workplace. Nepotism in its simplest form is “favoritism” toward relatives, without regard to merit. Michael Scott’s misguided decision to employ his jackwagon of a nephew, Luke, as an office assistant illustrated nearly […]

For Marijuana Workers’ Union, Hope Sprouts Eternal

by Mark I. Schickman You may have heard that California is going broke. As we look for more ways to generate revenue, one idea keeps cropping up: Move marijuana out of the underground economy and develop a new tax-generating agricultural product. Medical marijuana clubs have sprouted all over the state, and the November general election […]

Your HR Department 2010 Survey Results

While some HR departments got through the past year relatively unscathed, many have had to conduct layoffs, keep employees happy when they haven’t had a raise in more than a year, and all while their own departments and budgets have been slashed. Each year, HRhero asks its readers about their HR departments and how they […]

Must an Employer Grant Permanent Intermittent FMLA Leave?

Maybe not, according to a recent decision from the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The case has many people wondering if reevaluation of the word “leave” in the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) may be on the  horizon. FMLA Complete Compliance Perception may be reality . . . In February 2007, Charlene Wisbey […]