Today brings BIG changes for my career and me. It's my first day of work at Wickens Herzer Panza after relocating my practice and joining its Board of Directors, Litigation Department, and Employment & Labor practice team (which I'll help guide).
I am beyond excited for the opportunity and platform my new home offers my practice, my clients, and me. Stay tuned for some exciting ideas about how I can better help your business proactively solve your workforce problems.
One of the lasting lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is that our state unemployment systems are old and broken, and desperately need to be modernized and fixed. While the $1.9 trillion Covid relief package that President Biden is expected to imminently sign provides for a $300 federal unemployment bonus for a few months, that is the tiniest of bandaids on this very large problem.
Thankfully, we have John Oliver to offer his commentary on this important issue.
One of the new measures in this proposed extension is the inclusion of leave taken by an employee to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine or recover from any injury, disability, illness, or condition related to the vaccine.
I just announced Texas is OPEN 100%.
— Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) March 2, 2021
EVERYTHING.
I also ended the statewide mask mandate.
With that announcement, Texas joins Mississippi (whose governor made the same announcement yesterday) and many of the other usual suspects with no rules mandating that people wear masks or other facial covering in public or at work.
Nine days before Christmas, one of my neighbors posted the following on my community's Facebook page.Any prayer warriors on here, please keep the roofer who just fell off one of the townhouses in your prayers. It doesn't look like he's moving. So so sad 😢.
— Malibu StⒶsi 🏴 (@MalibuStasi) February 27, 2021
Adaptability to change is itself a hallmark of successful education.
– Peter Hilton
2020 – 2021 has been a different school year for everyone. My kids are fortunate in that their school, Lake Ridge Academy, has been open for full-time, in-person instruction for the entire school year. There have, however, been key changes in the name of safety. For example, the school made the decision not to participate in interscholastic sports this year. My son was able to participate on the Middle School robotics team, with the competition submitted remotely. My daughter had the benefit of participating in the Upper School's fall play, which was staged outside in the warm autumn weather.
The Upper School musical, usually presented on stage in late February, presented a different set of challenges. An outdoor performance is simply not an option in the harsh winter climate of Northeast Ohio. An indoor live performance is also not an option because it simply cannot be executed safely within COVID-19's limitations.
So what did the school do? It adapted. Instead of performing a live, in-person musical, it spent the past several months filming its first-ever movie musical, which it will stream March 5, 6, and 7. And my daughter, Norah, has the lead role.
Two machine operators … who jointly operated a press tested positive for the coronavirus just two days apart, in late August 2020. The two workers typically labored for hours at a time less than two feet apart; neither wore a protective facial mask consistently. Ten days later, two more workers operating similar presses together tested positive. On Sept. 19, 2020, one of the press operators fell victim to the virus and died.The total penalty? $15,604. For someone who died during a global pandemic because of his employer's irresponsibility
Last year I nominated Tyson Foods for 2020's Worst Employer because some of its managers started a cash buy-in betting pool on which of its employees would fall ill with COVID-19.
This past weekend, John Oliver did a scathing indictment of Tyson Foods and others for their health and safety record during the pandemic and otherwise.
Here's the lede:
Bryce Mottram, a former general manager at one of quirky ice cream purveyor Ample Hills' scoop shops, has filed a lawsuit in New York Eastern District Court alleging that he was fired from the company in retaliation for speaking up about instances of sexual harassment and unsafe COVID-19 workplace protocols at the company.
I firmly believe that for the next year-plus, just about every employment-related lawsuit will contain a COVID-19 whistleblower tag-along claim.
This week I had the pleasure of guesting on Pat Perry's Success Wave podcast. During our half-hour-plus conversation, Pat and I discussed a variety of topics, including lawyering in the time of COVID-19 and the key issues I see employers facing in 2021. We also talked about some general business questions, such as this one: How do I define "success." Here's my answer.
You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Think about it. If you want to know where the American public is, look at the money being spent on advertising. Did you ever five years ago think every second or third ad out of five or six you turn on would be biracial couples. [Applause] No, I'm not being facetious. The reason I'm so hopeful is this new generation. They're not like us. They're thinking differently. They're more open. And we have to take advantage of it.
Those were the words of President Biden last night, speaking about race relations during his CNN Town Hall.
He's 100 percent correct.
According to this article at Wirecutter.com, employers are using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification to enhance their monitoring of employees' activities, specifically remote employees.As COVID-19's spread has prompted an expansion of work-from-home policies across various industries, the use of more-pervasive monitoring software, also known as "tattleware" or "bossware," has increased. The New York Times demonstrated how this software works, but the idea is simple: Once the software is installed, an employer has deeper access and even live monitoring tools for everything you do on your computer, including which applications you open, what websites you visit, and how much time you spend doing different activities. Employers can use this data to track your attendance or periodically snap screenshots of your screen. Some software can even monitor the music you listen to, your facial expressions, your tone of voice, or your writing tone throughout the day. To what purpose depends on the type of work you do—and whom you do it for.
According to Brian Kropp, VP of Research for Gartner, the number of companies that use this "tattleware" has increased from 10 percent pre-COVID to 30 percent currently. It's an epidemic all on its own.
Must individuals who are fully vaccinated (i.e., have received both vaccine doses) against COVID-19 quarantine if they have been in close contact with someone who has a confirmed case of the virus?
