If the Equifax data breach hasn’t scared your company into cybersecurity compliance, Ohio lawmakers are considering dangling you a compliance carrot.
Senate Bill 220 [pdf], introduced earlier this month, would provide business a cybersecurity ‘safe harbor’ in exchange for compliance with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (or other similar standard).
It’s been a couple of weeks since baseball’s evil empire, otherwise known as the New York Yankees, knocked my beloved Cleveland Indians out of the playoffs.
I can’t say the pain has gone away, but seeing the Astros as the American League’s representative in the World Series helps an ever-so-small small bit.
With no risk of Yankees winning it all this year, it’s time I paid off a little bet I made with Dan Schwartz over the outcome of the Division Series.
Yesterday, I read When is an Employee Issue a Legal Issue (and When Is it HR)?, written by Dan Schwartz on his always excellent Connecticut Employment Law Blog. Dan posits that there are some instances when a business almost always should get legal involved with an employee issue, such as when it receives a “lawyer letter”, receives service of an agency charge or lawsuit, needs to conduct a privileged investigation, or confronts a complex or novel legal issue.
I’d like to address this same question from a more macro level.
Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Bill O’Reilly paid $32 million to settle a claim of sexual harassment brought against him by a former co-worker.
It’s horrible what I went through, horrible what my family went through. This is crap. It’s politically and financially motivated. We can prove it with shocking information. We have physical proof that this is bullshit.
As we wind down the year toward voting to name the first annual “Worst Employer of the Year,” I thought I had all bases covered. Then I read this story on Buzzfeed:
This Teen Says Her Chili’s Manager Sexually Harassed Her, And Her Coworkers Threw A Party To Shame Her
Thank you, Mr. Bryson, for proving my point. Let me also suggest (if you can stomach it) that you check out his account on Disqus.com, which exposes his views on a range of topics, including LGBTQ people, the Jews, and school shootings as false flags. For the record, he is con, con, and WTF?!
The FLSA draws a pretty clear line as to when breaks must be paid, and when they can be unpaid.
If a break 20 minutes or less in duration, it must be paid. Any longer, and an employer can make it an unpaid break.
What if, however, instead of providing employees paid breaks, an employer installs a system of flex time—the employer only pays employees for the time they are logged onto its system, which maximizes employees’ ability to take breaks from work at any time, for any reason, and for any duration.
Does this “flex time” system of unlimited unpaid breaks pass muster under the FLSA?
Indulge me, as this morning I once again take off my employment-law blogger hat, and replace it with my proud dad / music blogger hat.
Fake ID had quite the successful opening weekend of music. They started last Saturday night rocking The Pond Ice Rink’s annual clambake (encore included), and finished Sunday afternoon as the talk of the Hiram House Camp Pumpkin Festival.
It was an absolute joy to watch this band perform (and not just because one of them happens to be mine). These kids rock hard, work harder, and love what they are doing.
As one fan described his “favorite cover band in town” — “Book them now for your holiday party before they get their driver’s licenses!”
The movie opens with a babysitter receiving a telephone call from a man who asks, “Have you checked the children?” She dismisses the call as a practical joke, but as they continue, and become more frequent and threatening, she becomes frightened and calls the police. Ultimately, she receives a return call from the police, telling her that the calls are coming from inside the house.
(Cue ominous music)
October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. And, according to one recent study, employee negligence or other error is the cause of 41 percent of all data breaches. Your data breaches are coming from inside your house. The question is what are you going to do about it.
I am recently back on the podcast wagon. For reasons that I never understood, I abandoned the platform as a media source a few years ago. But I’m back with a vengeance.
Here are the five podcasts to which I’ve been most listening lately (along with their official descriptions and my favorite recent episode of each):
I spent a high-school summer working on a warehouse loading dock. One of my co-workers was named Harland Jester. (I provide his name because he named his son “Court,” and this context provides the necessary color for the rest of the story.)
Four days in to my summer job, a co-worker pulled me aside and ask, “Did Harland get a hold of you yet?”
Suppose you decide you are not going to pay your employees minimum wage and overtime required by the Fair Labor Standards Act. And let’s further say that the department of labor investigates your wage and hour practices and fines you to the tune of $1.95 million for the unpaid wages.
Do you—
Figure out how to pay the fine?
File bankruptcy and wrap yourself in its protections in an attempt to save as much of your assets as possible?
Transfer assets to family members to create an appearance of insolvency and inability to pay the fine?
If the Equifax data breach hasn’t scared your company into cybersecurity compliance, Ohio lawmakers are considering dangling you a compliance carrot.
The FLSA draws a pretty clear line as to when breaks must be paid, and when they can be unpaid.
I read a blog yesterday that asked the following question? “Do you need a workplace emoji policy?”
It’s been a busy few days in employment-law land, with the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment case dominating the headlines.
Last week I presented a webinar entitled, “The Top 10 Employee Handbook Mistakes.”
It’s news an employer never wants to deliver.
An employee grabs a co-worker’s penis and pokes another employee with a banana protruding from the zipper of his pants.