This headline in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye: These People Who Work From Home Have a Secret: They Have Two Jobs.
A small, dedicated group of white-collar workers, in industries from tech to banking to insurance, say they have found a way to double their pay: Work two full-time remote jobs, don’t tell anyone and, for the most part, don’t do too much work, either.
Alone in their home offices, they toggle between two laptops.
With more employers mandating vaccines for their employees, and businesses, cities, and schools doing the same for customers and other non-employee visitors, more people who resist the vaccine are turning to fake vaccine cards to remain employed or otherwise gain access.
As I wrote a few months ago, using a fake vaccine card is a federal crime. 18 U.S.C. sec. 1017 criminalizes the fraudulent or wrongful use of a government seal (in this case, that of the CDC). It is punishable by imprisonment of up to five years.
The illegality, however, hasn't stopped people, and the market is growing.
A few weeks ago I opined that the ADA likely covers Covid long-haul symptoms as protected disabilities that employers must accommodate.
In recently published policy guidance, the Department of Justice agrees.
How are you? Delta is spiking Covid infection rates to their highest levels since last winter. Hospitals are again facing a crisis of space. Breakthrough infections are a grim reality. Masks are again becoming part of our daily lives. How am I? I'm mad.
How mad? Mad enough to voice my resentment to WebMD.
"I am angry, I am resentful, and I think it’s a fair and appropriate response," says Jonathan Hyman, a Berea, OH, attorney who blames the unvaccinated for the backslide in pandemic progress.
Hyman has been following the difficult guidelines health experts have been urging from the beginning. He has been masking up, avoiding large gatherings, postponing travel, and he signed up to receive the vaccine as soon as it was available.
"We have been responsible, I did everything I was supposed to do," says Hyman, 48, who didn't visit his parents for 18 months to keep them safe. "Yet here we are, 16, 17 months later, and it feels like we're in the exact same place we were last summer, and it’s all because some people refuse to do the responsible things they were told to do."
"I need an accommodation for your mandatory vaccination policy. The vaccine is against my religion."
As more employers roll out vaccine mandates, more will be faced with this exact scenario.
Title VII requires an employer to reasonably accommodate an employee's sincerely held religious beliefs, practices, or observances, as long as the accommodation does not impose an undue hardship.
Two, and only two, religions, however, actually support people not getting vaccinated as a tenet of the religion — Christian Scientists and the Dutch Reformed Church. There are an estimated 106,000 Christian Scientists in the United States, and 194,000 members of the Reformed Church. That's a tidy total of 300,000 potential religious objectors based on their religion's actual teachings, period (or only 0.25% of all employees). But that minuscule number does not end the inquiry.
In the past week, we have been made aware of three employees who were coming to the office unvaccinated. All three have been terminated. Let me be clear — we have a zero-tolerance policy on this. You need to be vaccinated to come to the office. And you need to be vaccinated to work in the field, with other employees, regardless of whether you enter an office or not. Period. We expect that in the weeks ahead, showing proof of vaccination may become a formal part of the WarnerMedia Passcard process. Regardless, our expectations remain in place.
According to the lawsuit the State of California is bringing against Activision Blizzard, "During a company event … [key World of Warcarft developer Alex] Afrasiabi would hit on female employees, telling [them] he wanted to marry them, attempting to kiss them, and putting his arms around them. This was in plain view of other male employees, including supervisors, who had to intervene and pull him off female employees. Afrasiabi was so known to engage in harassment of females that his suite was nicknamed the 'Cosby Suite' after alleged rapist Bill Cosby."
You've read my posts from earlier this week, listened to the newly self-appointed quarterback of Team Vaccine Mandate, and decided to require the Covid vaccine for all of your on-site employees. After you announce your mandate, an employee enters your office to present the following ultimatum: "I'll get the vaccine," the employee tells you, "as soon as you sign off on this document."
The employee then hands you the following form, which it found on a website called The Solari Report.
Form for Employees Whose Employers Are Requiring Covid-19 Injection
— The Solari Report (@solari_the) August 2, 2021
This puts employers in a box. This is a form every employee who is faced with this needs to submit to the authorized officer of their company. It is 100% legally accurate, forces them to respond to your questions ttps://t.co/stuFAl0888">pic.twitter.com/stuFAl0888
I'm not proud of this but i just made a scene in public for the first time in my life… I walked into a Starbucks and they asked me to put a mask on! I yelled this is ridiculous, so I turned around and walked out. I know what you're thinking… My first mistake was walking into a Starbucks:)
I came across the post written by the former Hercules actor a couple of nights ago while perusing my LinkedIn feed. Three things came to mind.
If you have an employee experiencing one or more of these long-haul symptoms, what are your legal obligations to that employee under ADA and FMLA?
Children nationwide are getting ready to go back to the school for the 2021 – 22 school year, the third school year students and their parents will be living and dealing with, Covid-19.
Here's what we know about what this school year will look like.
Late last week, a federal jury tagged Walmart with a verdict totaling more than $125 million in a disability discrimination lawsuit the EEOC brought on behalf of an employee with Down syndrome.
I pay a teriyaki chef $120 per day. He worked ten hours—ten hours a day. So here’s how to calculate it. He works ten hours a day at $120 a day. I divide it by hours, and it’s $10.97 per hour. If he works overtime, it will be $16.20 overtime pay. So $120 a day, I have it covered because it was way past—way beyond $7.25 minimum wage rate. So I take consideration of the industry standard, you know. So either it is for teriyaki chef, it is $120 or $120 per day.In other words, as the court correctly surmised in Walsh v. Fusion Japanese Steakhouse, the employer "works backward to calculate the hourly rate of the employees based on the day rate." That backward calculation, however, to jerry-rig an hourly rate plus and overtime rate to arrive at the agreed-upon day rate, is not legal.
