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Cell Phones: What If an Employee Gets in an Accident While Doing Business on Your Cell? February

Although I gather it’s not illegal yet to talk on a handheld cell phone while driving, I’ve been hearing about some situations in which the company was held liable for accidents when the employee was doing business on the cell phone while driving. Even while driving to a ball game with the kids and taking […]

Hot List: New York Times Bestselling Hardcover Business Books

The following is a list of the bestselling hardcover business books as ranked by the New York Times with data from Nielsen BookScan on July 18. 1. Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner. This account of the Wall Street implosion highlights individuals who […]

Change at the White House: What About the Workplace?

It’s going to be quite a week. Today, of course, is the national holiday that celebrates the birth of the legendary civil rights leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Tomorrow, the nation and the world will witness history in the making as the first African-American is sworn in as President of the United States. Looking […]

Congress Expands FMLA’s Military Family Leave Provisions

Congress has moved with surprising speed in passing legislation to expand the situations in which an employee may take military caregiver leave and qualifying exigency leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The “Supporting Military Families Act of 2009” was only introduced in the House and Senate in late July. Now it has […]

Construction association sues to stop OFCCP’s new affirmative action rule

On November 19, 2013, Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a national association for the construction industry, filed a request for an injunction in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) final rule affecting federal government contractors, including construction contractors. […]

Hit and Run

I ran across a number of things this week that I thought were worthy of comment.  Instead of choosing one, I thought I would try to get them all in. In the “It’s About Time” category, the board of BP negotiated the departure of Tony Hayward as CEO of the oil company and replaced him […]

How Employers Can Participate in National Mentor Month

January 2013 is National Mentoring Month, which is the perfect time for employers that may be interested in establishing an external mentoring program to learn about how they can get started and enjoy the benefits of providing employee-mentors while helping their local community. In this video, BLR interviews an expert on internal and external business […]

10 CA Hospitals Fined for Medical Errors

Because of serious medical mistakes at 10 California hospitals, eight patients died, an adolescent lost vision, and a tenth patient sustained severe bleeding from the nose due to medical errors, according to the California Department of Public Health.

Wage and Hour: Ninth Circuit Strips Insurance Adjusters of Big Award

The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers California, has ruled that insurance adjusters for Farmers Insurance Exchange qualified for the administrative exemption from overtime, according to the standards under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. In so ruling, the appeals court threw out a $52.5 million judgment awarded by a federal trial court […]

Arizona Medical Marijuana Vote Too Close to Call

By Dinita L. James As of Thursday morning, the outcome of the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act remains too close to call. The no votes on Proposition 203 outnumbered the yes votes at one point late this morning by a slim 6,700-vote margin, with three precinct results incomplete and an unknown number of early voting ballots […]