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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.

A McDonalds location in Moncton (mountain road...

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

 
The reason is simple: vicarious liability
 
If the franchisor overreaches and actively controls the employee relationship, between franchisee and employee, then the franchisor might be liable under the legal theory of vicarious liability. 
 
If on the other hand, the franchisor does nothing, then at the very best, the franchisor may be complicit in allowing a violation of employment law.
 
At the Foley & Larnder LLP website, there is a nice explanation of the franchisor's dilemma.
 
 "In Myers v. Garfield & Johnson Enterprises, Inc., et al., 2010 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3468 (E.D. Pa. January 14, 2010), a federal district court in Pennsylvania held that defendant Jackson Hewitt, Inc., the franchisor of co-defendant Garfield & Johnson, was potentially liable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for sexual harassment allegedly committed by Garfield & Johnson managers. 
 
Rejecting the franchisor's motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, the court held that plaintiff's joint-liability theory was plausible enough to proceed to discovery. 
 
What is particularly bracing about the court's analysis is its recognition that these factors could trigger potential employer liability for the franchisor even though they were, in many cases, typical of the control exercised in any franchisor/franchisee relationship. 
 
The court said that if the standards for control and authority derived from common law principles for application in the Title VII context were met, the fact that they arose between a franchisor and franchisee and reflected the type of control that almost all franchisors exercise would not insulate the franchisor from liability.
 
Because the joint employer and agency tests involve multiple considerations with no single factor dispositive, it is not clear that any single contractual or operational step (short of drastically limiting the degree of control over franchisee operations that most franchisors feel is essential) could foreclose the potential for liability under this court's view of the law. 
 
Taking the decision at face value, it could be argued that, under Myers, franchisors find themselves between a rock and a hard place: 
 
The more closely they monitor franchisee employment practices, the greater the risk of their being subject to Title VII liability for the franchisee's wrongful behavior. If they eschew monitoring of that behavior, they may be subject to Title VII liability anyway under other elements of the applicable tests, and will not be in a position effectively to regulate conduct that could result in statutory violations. 
 
On the other hand, if they do monitor the behavior and then take draconian measures in response to franchisee violations, they may trigger liability under state dealership or franchise protection statutes."
 
So how does the franchisor both monitor to regulate the conduct, but not monitor so closely as to become vicarious liable, under common law or statute? It is a very difficult compliance problem for franchisors
 
One suggestion made by Michael Bowen is that 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.
 
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