Expert Compliance Insights & Tips for Businesses

February 6, 2009
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Labor Begins Big EFCA Drive, Descends on Capital

card check EFCA Howard Berman unionization
The AFL-CIO descended on Capitol Hill Wednesday in support of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), bearing a petition with a claimed 1.5-million signatures. The laborite love fest came a few days after Vice-President Joe Biden said "welcome back to the White House" to his union cronies and pledged support for the EFCA. However, though loudly dismissed by the AFL-CIO as bogus (anything that doe...
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February 6, 2009
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Does Starbucks CEO Now Punch the Time Clock?

After voluntarily surrendering his nearly $10-million yearly salary because of poor company performance, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is now earning less than one-percent of that, or $10,000 annually. Unfortunately, under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), that means that Schultzie is no longer an exempt employee and must start punching the time clock. Let's look at what the FLSA says about ...
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February 5, 2009
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Whole Lotta Health Care Day Dreamin' Goin' On

Health Care Reform Medicaid Medicare
As I noted in a previous posting, our current health care delivery system logs in as a $7,000-per-person-per-year behemoth. And I mean per all 300 million of us. (Do the math: $2.1 trillion divided by 300 mil.) That's why I get a good laugh everytime I read the results of a new survey. The one I came across today from the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University is full of comments by e...
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February 5, 2009
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FMLA Marks 16th Anniversary Today

Family and Medical Leave Act FMLA
The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) marks its 16th anniversary today (Feb. 5, 2009) in a beefed-up version that now allows family of service members to take up to 26 weeks of unpaid leave to care for their relatives in the military. Of course, provisions for 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for oneself or one's family, or for the birth or adoption of a child, are still on the books. Some 7...
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February 5, 2009
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Hard to Keep These $93K-a-Year Guv Employees Happy

government jobs
Gotta pity poor Randall Hinton, who says he's running out of music to listen to on his $93,803-a-year guv job, where he otherwise has nothing to do from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Oh, but he does also idle away his away counting cars passing by on the New York Thruway as he gazes out the window and listens to music. The guy basically can't be fired either, so why's he complaining and demanding ne...
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February 4, 2009
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Gotta Love OSHA Courses That Include Beer Breaks

OSHA OSHA training
An undercover reporter for New York's Daily News recently paid $125 to attend an OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) 10-hour training class. The class was over in 2 hours, 17 minutes. Held above a Bronx bar, the course enabled several of the attendees to slip away on breaktime to sip beers downstairs. Nice gig if you can get it. I suppose all the attendees were awarded OSHA c...
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February 3, 2009
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Obama Plays the Executive Order Cat-and-Mouse Game

Barack Obama Dubya executive orders federal contractors George W. Bush Rahm Emanuel
Nothing new here, as both Democrats and Republicans do it. When Dubya came to office, he reversed Clintonian mandates, and now Barack Obama has taken a few swipes at George W. and his executive orders. First, under the Rahm Emanuel rule, all government agencies have been forced to place on hold any directives that hadn't taken hold by Jan. 20, inauguration day of the new administration. This ...
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February 3, 2009
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A Hundred Years Later, Henry Ford Comes to China

assembly line China Henry Ford
American automobile pioneer Henry Ford is famous for many things, including the introduction of assembly-line production and, to make sure workers could endure the boredom of his assembly lines, the $5-a-day pay rule, which was unheard of in 1914. (At the same time, he reduced the workday from nine to eight hours, but we haven't progressed much since.) When Ford revolutionized industry with hi...
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February 2, 2009
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Group Says Single-Payer Can Be Created for $50 Billion

Health Care Reform Medicare single-payer health care
A group going by the name of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) has solved the Riddle of the (Health Care) Sphinx, or so it proclaims. The PDA folk claim that, by just extending Medicare to all Americans (thereby jettisoning, one would presume, all other current health care delivery systems), the country could--bugles blaring, drums rolling--create 2,613,495 million new, permanent, good-pa...
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February 2, 2009
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Minimum Wage Laws Cost Busboys Their Jobs

busboys minimum wage restaurants wait staff
The Wall Street Journal, which has been chronicling the nation's economic woes industry by industry, today ran a a piece about the latest cost-cutting strategy being employed at some restaurants--letting the busboys go. Of course, this means that the wait staff must now clear tables and scrape dishes clean, tasks that most of them frown on and that some have even refused to do, leaving their p...
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