HR/Employment Blogosphere update for August 29, 2005

Special Back to School Edition

Today I’ve grouped our updates around school themes:

Organized Teachers (teacher’s union is now blogging)

Socratic Teaching Method (two interesting questions posed and answered)

Sunday School? (faith and work; an attitude)

Management School (workplace stress; jobs that pay women more; future of recruiting)

Labor Law School (answers to some basic questions about picketing)

School of Courtroom Hard Knocks (couple of million dollar verdicts)

School of Political Hard Knocks (getting ready to beat up on Judge Roberts?)

Safety School (lessons from workplace fatalities)

Globalization Lesson of the Week (Chinese labor activism and labor market changes)

Organized Teachers

As the teachers and kids go back to school, Labor Blog tips us off to the new group blog, Edwize, started very recently by the United Federation of Teachers Union (UFT). It will include various education topics as well as union and labor issues. It’s already generated some media attention and controversy amongst the contentious membership.

Socratic Teaching (asking questions, not lecturing) — sort of

Stories of Conflict, Drama & Legal Resolutions in the Work Place, an employee-side employment law blog,
held an “open mike” session, soliciting inquiries for a “Dear Abby” style feature.

Whether the question was genuine or made-up for a slam-dunk answer, the answer revealed a promising combination of mild humor and clear, plain-spoken legal non-advice (we lawyers can’t actually give legal advice to strangers over the Internet). I especially liked points 1 & 2, which I found to be slightly funny, while conveying important human and legal points.

A couple of weeks ago, successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur Auren Hoffman wrote a post on his blog, Summation, about whether it is better to “join a start-up, start a company, or join a more established firm.”

Auren comes down strongly on the side of joining a start-up or starting your own company, saying “it is counter-intuitive, but it is actually far less risky to take a risk” (because these days the big company job is also quite risky and its “up-side is capped and your downside is roughly the same as [at] the start-up.”)

Stephen Harris at Job Stuff weighs in on the same side as Auren, concluding: “in today’s economy a start-up that is paying a reasonable wage and offering benefits is no more or less risky than joining a Fortune 1000.” And the experience at these smaller operations is well worth the risk.”

But unlike Auren, who was an entrepreneur from day one, Stephen tells the story of his own experience over many more years, transitioning from faith in the big company through betrayal and on to a much more entreprenurial viewpoint.

On a similar subject, see Steve Pavlina.com: “80% of New Employees Fail Within the First 5 Years,” more about “going the entrepreneurial route” than the title implies.

Sunday School?

Jobseeker’s Revenge points to an interesting brief piece on faith in the workplace, but not in the sense of employers or coworkers pushing religious views on others. Rather, this Streaming Faith Editorial is an appeal to use personal faith to overcome personal work challenges:

By faith a barren Sarah gave birth, your course is to birth a business. By faith Moses was hidden for 3 months, your course is to allow God to hide you in the workplace until you learn a position you were not really qualified for. By faith Abraham obeyed difficult commands, your course is to obey the difficult boss. By faith Joshua shouted until the city came down, your course is to speak over your career until the barriers fall away. By faith promises were obtained, your course is to trust God for your workplace destiny.

The next paragraph adverts to Christ, but the part quoted above is all from the part of the Jewish tradition shared by Christians and Jews. It can even be meaningful to the atheist or agnostic, whose “faith” is not in God, but in themselves, or in a better future. Patience and persistence are virtues; faith may help get you there [end of sermon].

Management School

Jobseeker’s Revenge also ran the “10 Biggest Causes of Workplace Stress,” by Dale Collie and “5 Fields that pay women more than men.”

Steve Fogarty, at Recruiting Revolution, wrote “Future of Recruiting Part 2,” a long and thoughtful original post well worth reading.

Labor Law School

Charles Scrader’s Construction Labor Law blog had a series of posts back in July giving basic and timeless labor law lessons, answering the following questions:

“When is secondary boycott picketing legal? The ‘common situs’ exception.”

“Rights Of Employees Respecting Picket Lines”

“Can a union be sued for unlawful picketing?”

In-House Law School

LaborProf Blog tips us off to “Outside, Looking In,” a short, practical article about whether and how to conduct internal company investigations in response to “whistleblowing.”

School of Courtroom Hard Knocks

Jottings by an Employer’s Lawyer reports on another million-dollar-plus harassment verdict (this one was $6 mil.) and a Texas Supreme Court case following Fifth Circuit precedent on the “similarly situated” issue, which arises when a plaintiff attempts to prove discrimination by comparison to employees not in the protected class who allegedly were treated more leniently.

Two interesting points. First, here the alleged discriminates were males treated less favorably than females, a reverse discrimination allegation which tends not to make for a very plausible claim, at least unless the management was all female or operating under some misguided diversity quotas and therefore favoring females. Second, the excellent blog Jottings drew the type of unhelpful, snotty comment about a former colleague that makes some bloggers turn their comments off.

The Employment Law Bulletin reports on another very large California verdict: “UPS Worker Awarded $21 Million in Wrongful Termination Suit” A whistleblower case. Follow the link to the LA Times for details.

Sounds like a valid reason for termination — time record falsification by one minute– that didn’t meet the “smell test,” i.e., seemed fishy to the jury, although to HR and employment lawyers it probably makes plenty of sense.

In a case like this, you have to beat the jury over the head with the consequences of FLSA recordkeeping violations to get them to understand why even a one minute alteration by a supervisor would be viewed as a grave breach of trust.

School of Political Hard Knocks

Soon after the kids are all back in school (mine started today), the Senate will be back for fun and games with John Roberts.

Perhaps the Washington Post has not been the most objective source, but it has also not been the least. It’s been running a steady set of stories anticipating the Roberts confirmation hearings, linking them all from stories on this webpage for easy reading.

Safety School

Confined Space’s “Weekly Toll” provides the usual sobering reminder of the importance of safety management.

Those with responsibilities for such matters need to read this stuff regularly and picture themselves having to deal with a workplace fatality.

See also “NT man dies in industrial accident at Frontier Fibres” for the kind of unpleasant questions that are raised in the wake of such tragedies.

Your answer better be that your operation was designed to be fully OSHA-compliant and that if safety steps were omitted it was in violation of company policy, contrary to safety training, and without management knowledge.

Globalization Lesson of the Week

LaborProf Blog links to a Business Week story on the growing labor movement in China, discussing factors leading to the conclusion, among others, that “the low-wage model for China could slowly start to morph into one that depends on higher pay and greater productivity.”