Friday Diversion #4: Soon to Be a Cable Movie. Guaranteed.

This week’s diversion once again comes from the intersection of sex and work, but with an angle straight out of a Lifetime movie.

The Metropolitan News-Enterprise reported this week that the California Supreme Court denied review of a claim brought by a “cuckolded husband” against his wife’s new boyfriend…’s employer.

Yep.

The company, Challenger Sports Corporation, sets up soccer camps run by British soccer coaches. They bring the coaches in, and get local families to house them for the summer.

Do I have to go on? Yes? Ok.

It seems that the man and his wife signed up to house a young male athlete with a British accent for the entire summer, and it did not end exactly as either of them had planned. By the end of the soccer camp, Mrs. Plaintiff had “moved out of the bedroom, drained the family bank account, and served [the Plaintiff] with a divorce petition.”

So the guy did the only sensible thing: he sued Challenger Sports for breach of contract and fraud.

The Supreme Court of California wasn’t on board, though, holding that having an affair with your host’s wife is pretty clearly outside the scope of your employment, and any claim against the coach can’t be levied against the corporation.

Thankfully, the Court’s ruling in this case will take away that constant, nagging worry that one of your employees will open you up to liability by sleeping with someone’s wife.

What? You don’t have that nagging feeling? Well, lucky you, I guess.

NLRB Makes It Official: One More Labor Poster on the Wall

The National Labor Relations Board has issued the final version of a rule requiring employers to notify workers of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act. This rule proposal made news this past winter, because up until now, the NLRB hasn’t been in the business of issuing rules at all.

By thezenderagenda.com

Here’s the long and short of it: Beginning November 14, 2011, if you employ people – at all – you will be required to put up an 11×17 poster that tells your employees that they have the right to organize, bargain collectively, and engage in protected concerted activity, and provides the number to the NLRB to report any violation of their rights. The poster will also tell them they have the right not to join a union, too. Just to make it fair.

The poster will be made available in other languages, and if 20% of your workforce speaks another language, you’ll need that poster, as well.

Oh, and if you regularly post notices to your employees on an intranet, the notice(s) will have to appear there, too.

Actually, all that’s just the “short” of it. The “long” would have to apply to the final rule as it appears in the Code of Federal Regulations, which is nearly 200 pages long. Most of it is response to the comments from business groups who opposed the rule – and the Board’s rulemaking at all – during the lead up to today’s issuance.

And it really does apply to everybody, folks. From the NLRB’s announcement:

There is no union in my workplace; will I still have to post the notice?

Yes. Because NLRA rights apply to union and non-union workplaces, all employers subject to the Board’s jurisdiction (aside from the USPS) will be required to post the notice.

I am a federal contractor. Will I have to post the notice?

The Board’s notice posting rule will apply to federal contractors, who already are required by the Department of Labor to post a similar notice of employee rights. A contractor will be regarded as complying with the Board’s notice posting rule if it posts the Department of Labor’s notice.

I operate a small business. Will I have to post the Board’s notice?

The rule applies to all employers subject to the Board’s jurisdiction, other than the U.S. Postal Service. The Board has chosen not to assert its jurisdiction over very small employers whose annual volume of business is not large enough to have a more than a slight effect on interstate commerce. The jurisdictional standards are summarized in the rule.

Failure to post the notice will be considered an unfair labor practice. While the Board can’t impose fines for failing to put up the poster, it can extend the statute of limitations for filing charges if an employee claims he didn’t know his rights because the poster was missing.

If you’re looking for a silver lining in all of this, here’s one I found in the thick of the final rule: originally, employers who regularly addressed their workforce via email would have to notify all employees by email as well. The Board eliminated that requirement, noting how confusing and repetitive it would be to re-send the notice to everyone any time a new person was hired. The required wording for the link to the intranet posting, which originally read “Important Notice about Employees Rights to Organize and Bargain Collectively with Their Employers” has also been changed to “Employee Rights under the National Labor Relations Act.”

(ht Jon Hyman)

Mass Layoffs in Illinois: The Basics

Before our kids were born, my wife worked at an ad agency here in Chicago. Last month, the agency she worked for lost its biggest account. Last week, the layoffs came: 100+ employees in the Chicago office, roughly 3% of the company’s worldwide staff, according to news reports. It’s a brutal cut.

Notably, this particular incident wasn’t a product of the recession or the global economy or anything like that. From the looks of things, it was a simple corporate falling out. These two companies had worked together for decades, and one of them decided it was time to move on. Which is a good reminder to us all: these things happen. Regardless of the market forecast, accounts can be lost, and adjustments have to be made.

My heart goes out to those whose reality has changed. God knows I know what it’s like. My mind, on the other hand – which for better or worse views the world through Labor & Employment-colored glasses – thinks maybe its time we talk about what to do when you’ve got to let a lot of people go.

There’s a lot of ground to cover, so today’s post is going to just go over the basics of what the laws require. Future posts this and next week will discuss more specifics: what goes in the notice(s), exceptions to these requirements, how to calculate when the notice should be given, etc.

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