Recently in Education Category

Yesterday and today, we celebrate Veterans Day to honor those who have served our country in the armed forces.

Are you, as an employer, aware of your obligations to protect the jobs and benefits of your own employees who serve in the military or your employees who have family members who serve?

The Uniformed Services Employment Rights and Re-employment Rights Act (USERRA) affects all employers with employees who serve in the armed forces. The law provides job protection to employees in the regular armed forces and National Guard if called up to active duty.

Similarly, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FLMA) provides job protected leave for your employees who are family members of those in the military and who:

• serve as caregivers to those who have served and were injured or became ill through that service (up to 26 weeks leave); or
• experience a “qualified exigency” due to the impending or current service of their family member serving in the military (up to 12 weeks leave.) A qualified exigency occurs when families need to help manage the affairs of the service member who is called up or serving on active duty; examples include managing financial affairs or assisting with childcare issues.

HRSentry provides subscribers with a USERRA Kit containing all the resources you need, including USERRA-related provisions within the FMLA, to help our service men and women and their families when preparing for an absence from work and to help you ensure compliance with the law. To access this and other HRSentry kits, subscribers may simply click on HR Topic Modules under the Knowledge Menu. These and other useful HR-related resources are always available at your fingertips 24/7!

PRESS RELEASE

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division has identified significant violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and has obtained remedies for them at 28 Huddle House restaurants in Georgia, Missouri and West Virginia. Corporate franchisor Huddle House Inc. has agreed to facilitate compliance among all its franchisee-operated restaurants as well as to assist the division in promoting industrywide compliance with the FLSA.

In addition, minimum and overtime back wages totaling $60,594 will be paid to 128 employees. Finally, the division assessed $48,317 in civil money penalties for repeat and child labor violations.

The division’s investigations were initiated under a multiyear enforcement initiative focused on the restaurant industry in Georgia, where widespread noncompliance with the FLSA’s minimum wage, overtime, record-keeping and child labor provisions had been found, particularly among companies that use a franchise business model.

Of the investigated establishments, most of the violations were found at the 25 franchisee-owned Huddle Houses as opposed to three that are corporate-owned. The division included investigation of Huddle Houses in Missouri and West Virginia.

Investigators found that some Huddle House employees did not receive at least the minimum wage because the cash wage paid by the employer plus tips received did not equal minimum wage for all hours worked, and in other cases, employees only received tips and were not paid a cash wage. Additionally, some employees’ pay dropped below the minimum wage because they were required to share tips with non-tipped employees, or because deductions were made for breakage losses, damages and check-cashing fees. Salaried nonexempt employees, such as cooks, were paid a salary that did not equal minimum wage.

Overtime violations involved tipped employees not receiving overtime at the correct rate and salaried nonexempt employees not receiving overtime pay, as well as overtime paid to some employees after 80 hours in a two-week period rather than after 40 hours in a workweek. The child labor violation involved a 15-year-old employee who was allowed to work more hours than permitted by the FLSA, which limits minors to no more than three hours on a school day or 18 hours in a school week.

The investigation covered Huddle House restaurants in Adel, Barnesville, Buford (two restaurants), Calhoun, Cedartown, Dallas, Douglas (two restaurants), Dublin, Elberton, Gray, Jeffersonville, Marietta, Milledgeville, Reidsville, Rockmart, Rome, Royston, Sandersville, Springfield, Summerville, Swainsboro, Sylvania, Toccoa and Waynesboro, Ga.; West Plains, Mo.; and Buckhannon, W.Va.

“This enforcement initiative is aimed at strengthening compliance among restaurants operated as franchises. The division has found many FLSA violations in this highly competitive industry sector resulting from practices, such as requiring employees to work exclusively for tips, paying cash wages that fall below the federal minimum wage, making illegal wage deductions and failing to pay proper overtime compensation to tipped and salaried employees,” said Janet Campbell, director of the Wage and Hour Division’s Atlanta District Office.

To assist its franchise restaurants in complying with federal labor regulations, Huddle House has committed to taking the following measures: requiring franchisees to attend FLSA compliance training, encouraging continued participation in regularly offered training sessions, requiring FLSA posters at all establishments, checking for posters during regular unit evaluations, and creating business incentives that reward compliance behavior among franchisees and managers. Huddle House also has invited Wage and Hour Division representatives to conduct compliance training sessions at the company’s annual conventions.

“We are pleased that Huddle House is pursuing broader measures to educate its franchisees on FLSA requirements and is assisting the division in promoting a stronger culture of compliance in the restaurant industry. The company’s efforts are commendable and should remind all employers that paying fair wages and complying with the law is good for business,” added Campbell.

The FLSA requires payment of at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 to covered, nonexempt employees for all hours worked. It also requires that employees receive time and one-half their regular rates, including commissions, bonuses and incentive pay, for hours worked beyond 40 per week. Additionally, employers must maintain accurate time and payroll records.

An employer of a tipped employee is only required to pay $2.13 an hour in direct wages if that amount plus the tips received equals at least the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. If an employee’s tips combined with the employer’s direct wages do not equal the minimum wage, the employer must make up the difference.

Employers may create a tip-pooling or sharing arrangement among employees who customarily and regularly receive tips, but a valid tip pool may not include employees who do not customarily and regularly receive tips, such as dishwashers, cooks, chefs and janitors.

Finally, paycheck deductions for patrons who do not pay for their orders, broken dishes or cash register shortages are illegal if they reduce an employee’s wages below the minimum wage.

This has been a PRESS RELEASE. For more information about the FLSA, call the Wage and Hour Division’s Atlanta office at 404-893-4600, or its toll-free helpline at 866-4US-WAGE (487-9243). Information is also available on the Internet at http://www.dol.gov/whd.

U.S. Department of Labor releases are accessible on the Internet at www.dol.gov. The information in this news release will be made available in alternate format (large print, Braille, audio tape or disc) from the COAST office upon request. Please specify which news release when placing your request at (202) 693-7828 or TTY (202) 693-7755. The Labor Department is committed to providing America’s employers and employees with easy access to understandable information on how to comply with its laws and regulations. For more information, please visit www.dol.gov/compliance.

Everyone has heard that personal connections are the key to successful negotiation in China, but what happens when your relationship goes off the rails?  Resolving conflict across cultures is tough, but not impossible.  The key is to manage your relationship so that mutual trust survives the first conflict.  It's easier said than done - but certainly not impossible.

On Thursday, October 27, 2011,  9:00 am, Andrew Hupert is giving a seminar on Managing Conflict in China.

Andrew Hupert is founder and CEO of Best Practices China Ltd., based in Shanghai. Since 2003 he has been advising and coaching executives and managers in multinationals to improve their deal-making and negotiating skills with Chinese counter-parties. His corporate clients include Philips, Schneider/Clipsal and Keuhne + Nagel. He is an Adjunct Professor at New York University (Shanghai campus) and has also lectured at Strathclyde University's EMBA program.

Andrew first came to Asia in 1990 after receiving his MBA in International Finance from New York University Stern School of Management. He gained extensive senior sales and management experience with leading financial institutions in Taipei, Hong Kong, Kyoto and New York before settling in Shanghai as a consultant and lecturer.

He has also published articles in business journals such as Shanghai Business Review and the China Economic Review, for which he writes a column on China-business strategy and negotiation. Companies around the world follow his discussions about negotiation tactics in China at ChineseNegotiation.com

To Read more of Michael Webster's articles, please click here.

(From the PBS News Hour Transcript of Potential Risks of Borrowing Money)

JOSH KOSMAN: The Boston Consulting Group last year predicted half of their companies would default. Let's say the companies that go bankrupt end up laying off a quarter of their people, a third. You know, you can easily get to more than a million people. That's a lot of people.

PAUL SOLMAN: In fact, says Kosman, half of the S&P-rated firms that went bankrupt last year, besides banks, that is, were private equity acquisitions, including Chrysler, Simmons, Six Flags, and "Reader's Digest," where retirees, including executives, had their pensions slashed by a debt-driven bankruptcy.

Ken Gordon was president.

KEN GORDON, former president, "Reader's Digest": I have lost 80 percent of my total pension.

PAUL SOLMAN: Did you ever imagine you might not see that money?

KEN GORDON: Not in my wildest dreams.

PAUL SOLMAN: Same for former editor in chief Ed Thompson.

ED THOMPSON, former editor in chief, "Reader's Digest": I lost about $75,000 a year.

PAUL SOLMAN: What was your reaction?

ED THOMPSON: Anger. How could they have screwed up this company to the point where they have to go through bankruptcy

JANE PERSONENI, former head of international advertising, "Reader's Digest": When you begin to see these people taking over, it's like Predator drones are coming in.

PAUL SOLMAN: Jane Personeni, head of international advertising, lost about a third of her pension.

JANE PERSONENI: Am I crying poverty? No, I'm not. But it certainly -- it was something I felt I had earned. It was something I thought was going to keep going. And it stopped.

PAUL SOLMAN: Others are near poverty, however.

Image via Wikipedia

Employee relations between a franchisee and its employees is a headache for the franchisor. 

Insisting that all employment-related materials given to franchisee employees -- contracts, handbooks, policy statements, codes of conduct, and so forth -- be franchisee-specific and perceptibly distinct from franchisor materials.