Articles by Girish Anand

February 5, 2009

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FMLA Marks 16th Anniversary Today

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...

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...

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...

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 ...

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...

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...

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...

January 30, 2009

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Car Washes Targeted by ICE for Immigration Raids

ICE immigration raids USCIS

News item from the blogosphere: Earlier this year, Car Care Inc., a subsidiary of Mace Securities Inc., was ordered to pay a fine of $100,000 and to forfeit $500,000 to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) following a 2006 investigation. (At one time, Mace, a manufacturer of security and personal defense products, was one of the largest carwash chains in the nation.) Car Care Inc...

January 30, 2009

73 view(s)

Unemployment Benefits for Strikers? Court Says Yes

New Jersey nurses strike unemployment benefits

The New Jersey State Supreme Court, in a 6-1 ruling, has authorized striking nurses to receive unemployment benefits, overturning just about every precedent concerning unemployment insurance. The lone dissenting justice, Roberto Rivera-Soto, called the decision "perverse," noting that it "upends the common-sense notion that striking employees have left their employment voluntarily and, hence, ...

January 29, 2009

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Vicky Crawford: Six Years to Get Her Day in Court

discrimination sexual harassment Vicky Crawford

This week the U.S. Supreme Court reversed lower-court rulings in the case of Vicky* Crawford, allowing her suit against Metro Nashville Public Schools in Tennessee to go to trial. (*I've also seen her first name spelled Vicki, don't know which is correct.) The way I read things, Ms. Crawford got royally screwed both by her employers and by the courts. In 2001, Gene Hughes was hired as the emp...

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About author

Girish Anand

Recent Articles

Practical articles on HR, Safety, compliance, and people operations—written for real businesses, not legal textbooks.

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Articles by Girish Anand