HRLori

Mike Lester of the Rome News-Tribune brilliantly sums it all up:

A judge in Michigan has allowed the lawsuits filed by two former Hooters employees to move forward. Cassandra Smith, 20, and Leanne Convery, 23, both of Michigan, filed separate lawsuits in response to being fired because of her weight.

And it looks like they have a case for their complaint. The Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA), enacted in 1976, prohibits Michigan employers against discrimination on the basis of weight.

Under Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act (ELCRA), it’s illegal to subject people to differential treatment based on religion, race, color, national origin, age, sex, height, weight, familial status or marital status.

The ELCRA prohibits employers from discriminating against any member of the protected classes listed above in hiring, compensation or the terms, conditions or privileges of employment.

The law is Michigan’s version of the federal Civil Rights Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Equal Pay Act all rolled into one. While those federal laws cover employers with 15 or more employees, the state law covers all employers.

To put a finer point on it, Michigan House bill 4529, called the “Respect for Physical Differences Act” is being proposed.

From Michigan Employment Law Connection:

House bill # 4529 is called the “Respect for Physical Differences Act.” Employers with one or more employees may not refuse to hire, fire, and discriminate with respect to terms and conditions of employment because of body type, degree of physical fitness, or other physical characteristics. The law does not apply where these conditions are a BFOQ or where they impair the employment activity or responsibility of a particular employee or group of employees. The burden is on the employer to establish that the BFOQ is reasonably necessary to the performance of the job. Retaliation against individuals who enforce the act is prohibited, and an action may be filed in state court.

Hooter’s management, of course, has a different take on the matter.

Chiefs at Hooters — which has more than 435 restaurants across the US — say the law should not apply as its waitresses are “entertainers”, whose appearance is a “legitimate concern”.

I’m sure that much can be said about this case, but what it really boils down to is “Law vs. BFOQ“.

I’m really curious to see how this one plays out.

From The Oatmeal:

The Awesome:

The Horrible:

[via Laughing Squid]

This episode of “Put This On” features Paul Feig the creator of “Freaks and Geeks“.

[via Laughing Squid]

TechCrunch announced today that Madhu Yarlagadda, Skype’s incoming Chief Development Officer, has resigned from his position. Mr. Yarlagadda’s resignation comes one month after negative comments about him as well as his subsequent influence upons other to obtain positive comments on a TechCrunch post were brought to his employer’s attention.

The New York Times says he left after scathing comments on TechCrunch about his new role at Skype came to the attention of Skype executives. The post they’re referring to has dozens of extremely detailed negative comments about Yarlagadda, although we’ve deleted the worst of them. That level of uniform negativity was unprecedented in our experience.

Because Mr. Yarlagadda’s wife threatened legal action against TechCrunch for not moderating the scathing comments made against her husband, TechCrunch reached out to Skype for a position statement. This may have then caused Skype to re-think their decision about hiring Mr. Yarlagadda.

Per the New York Times, “The comments caught the attention of Skype executives who became concerned about their new hire, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak with the news media.” AP News briefly stated that Mr. Yarlagadda left Skype due to “personal reasons” per a company spokeswoman.

What it comes down to is that opinions are like…noses. Everybody’s got one and no one can control what people say, particularly when they are sitting behind the safety of a monitor and keyboard. The best way I’ve found to deal with such “noses” is to not react. At best, reacting gets you nowhere and at worst it can make you go backwards (i.e. losing your job). Perhaps a quiet request to TechCrunch to assist would have gotten Mr. and Mrs. Yarlagadda further along and let them move past the vitriol. But we’ll never know.

Either way, Mr. Yarlagadda is out of a job. And, as Mike Arrington said, “It’s just a bad situation all around..”

Paul Shin Divine, a global supply manager for Apple was charged today with selling company secrets in exchange for supplier kickbacks.

From SF Appeal:

Paul Shin Divine was arrested Friday for allegedly selling confidential information to several of Apple Inc.’s suppliers in Asia, IRS Special Agent Arlette Lee said.

Divine named a lawyer, Raphael M. Goldman, at his hearing on Monday and entered a plea of not guilty, according to court documents…In addition to receiving payments, Divine also faces charges of wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, and doing business with stolen company property, according to an indictment filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose. The indictment lists 23 counts total.

And from the Bangkok Post:

“Devine came up with a scheme in which he supplied companies such as Cresyn Co. in South Korea, Kaedar Electronics Co. in China and Jin Li Mould Manufacturing Pte. Ltd. in Singapore with confidential information that would let them negotiate favorable contracts with Apple,” the report said.

Did he really think that he wouldn’t get caught?

We’ve all heard about weird resignation stories, but I think this one ranks up there with the best.

JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater after having a dispute with a passenger who began retrieving his luggage too early, took control of the plane’s intercom letting loose a string of expletives while announcing his resignation (“It’s been great”) and exited via the emergency evacuation slide, grabbing a beer along the way.

Per the NY Daily News:

After he was bonked in the head by a bag, Steven Slater stunned passengers by spewing profanity and ranting about quitting as the flight from Pittsburgh pulled up to the gate around noon.

“To the f—ing a–hole who told me to f— off, it’s been a good 28 years,” Slater, 38, purred, cops said.

“I’ve had it. That’s it,” he added, according to a passenger on board.

While this incident will strike most as amusing, Mr. Slater evidently was under a great deal of stress in his personal life.

From the New York Times:

A former roommate, John Rochelle, said Mr. Slater was seldom home. When Mr. Slater was not working, Mr. Rochelle said, he was usually in Thousand Oaks, Calif., a Los Angeles suburb, caring for his sick mother.

A neighbor there, Ron Franz, said Mr. Slater also cared for his father as he was dying from Lou Gehrig’s disease. Mr. Franz, 72, was hard-pressed to explain Mr. Slater’s actions on Monday. “It could be the pressure of his mother’s illness, because that’s not the type of behavior or conduct that Steve exhibits,” he said. “He’s a very conscientious, responsible individual.”

Even so, Mr. Slater’s actions, while spontaneous, were extremely irresponsible and he will be facing criminal felony charges including criminal mischief and reckless endangerment.

We’ll just have to see how this one plays out.

[via Laughing Squid]

This had me ROFLMA. No really.

Just a small taste of this incredibly bad advice to a question about harassment:

Harassment, I learned, isn’t just a swift pop in the chops or a quick squeeze of my firm, supple buttocks. It encompasses all the senses, not just your sense of erotic/violent touch. So, this guy stinks? Well, he’s harassing your nose, penetrating it with unwanted vileness. He’s annoying you with his constant stream of soft-core phone calls? That’s an auditory assault, a clear case of smut-tinged sexual harassment. Go to human resources (whose job is to stop people from acting like humans) and file complaints against this monster. At the very least they’ll place you as far away from him as possible and maybe tell him to treat your ears and nose with more respect.

I love it when we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

When I was writing about the Unemployment Extension Act, I neglected to mention a wonderful website called the Layoff List. The Layoff List is a place where the unemployed (and everyone else) can go to find out about unemployment news, jobless claims and the “Real UE [UI] Numbers”. The list was started by a guy named Mike due to his own situation of being a 99er:

The reason I started this blog was to highlight the employment picture and to list smaller layoff announcements that don’t get the attention of main stream media. There is a great deal of scattered job loss information, but I try to gather that information and present it in a manner that is concise and, hopefully, informative.

Another person promoting the cause of the unemployed is Palidinette (aka LaDona King) who is more aggressive in her approach:

From the Washington Independent: (Thanks Cricket!)

…She routinely publishes phone numbers, fax numbers and email addresses of lawmakers to target, rallying her thousands of online supporters to the cause. King personally calls 25 or 30 legislators’ offices a day. Sometimes, when she posts lawmakers’ numbers or picks out a particularly egregious example of a legislator blocking a vote or putting down the unemployed, her followers flood a Senate or House office with phone calls.

And finally, Ur Union of Unemployed or U-Cubed, which is,

…a community service project of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). With over 31 million Americans idled to some degree by this Grave Recession – and no relief in sight — the IAM and its partners saw a need to unify the unemployed in a unique and useful way.

UCubed does exactly that. It brings people together – the unemployed and underemployed alike – to build a community of Jobs Activists who will create local networks, support one another and help get America back to work.

I voraciously applaud all the efforts that the above are making on the behalf of the unemployed.

We truly appreciate it.

It was bad enough that SEC employees were caught accessing pornography in the workplace. Now, per The Boston Globe, over 30 Pentagon employees/contractors with high level clearance have been investigated for accessing and purchasing child pornography over the internet using government computers. Aside from it being completely reprehensible and disgusting, there seem to be other pressing concerns regarding national security:

The number of offenders is a small percentage of the thousands of people working for sensitive Pentagon-related agencies. But the fact that offenders include people with access to government secrets puts national security agencies “at risk of blackmail, bribery, and threats, especially since these individuals typically have access to military installations,’’ according to one report by the Defense Criminal Investigative Service from late 2009.

The investigation known as “Operation Flicker” (not Flickr) began in 2006, developed by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department (ICE). Since its inception, the investigation has uncovered over 5,000 incidents of child pornography, among those being a doctor in San Antonio and a former Florida State Attorney Investigator who was charged in 2009.

One would think that any employee, particularly those with high level security clearance, would know better to engage in such action at all, let alone in the workplace. Yet experts state that it’s difficult to spot someone who accesses child pornography:

“Some are in high-ranking positions, in positions of trust,’’ said John Sheehan, executive director of the exploited child division at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which has been consulted on many of these cases and has reviewed 36 million images of alleged child pornography since 2002 at the request of law enforcement agencies. “There isn’t a profile or stereotype, which makes it even more challenging for law enforcement.’’

This is very disturbing indeed.

Yesterday President Obama signed into law HR 4213, the Unemployment Extension Bill, after a hard fought battle of how it would be financed .

This law would “extend extend the filing deadline for existing tiers of unemployment benefits until November 30, 2010 and extend for three month the closing deadline for first-time homebuyers looking to get the $8,000 tax credit.” It is, however, a hollow victory as this law does not create an additional tier of benefit for “99ers” – those who have already exhausted all of their UI benefits.

No matter how you slice it, the unemployment rate is at 9.5% with the majority of people remaining on UI for longer periods of time (myself included) despite their fervent job search. Despite these numbers, however, several politicians still think that those on UI are “unmotivated”

Ron Johnson, a candidate in the Wisconsin Senate race, had this to say:

When you continue to extend unemployment benefits, people really don’t have the incentive to go take other jobs. They’ll just wait the system out until their benefits run out, then they’ll go out and take, probably not as high paying jobs as they’d like to take, but that’s really how you have to get back to work. You have to take the work that’s available at the wage rates that’s available.

And Senator Burr, R-North Carolina:

Thankfully, Heidi Shierholz of The Washington Post penned a great article, 5 Myths About Unemployment, refuting such (unfair) opinions about the Unemployed.

Today, however, unemployment insurance isn’t providing breathing room — it’s providing a lifeline. There are now roughly five unemployed workers for every available job. That doesn’t mean there are five applicants for every job opening; there may be scores of applications for every posting, as people apply for many jobs. Instead, it means there literally aren’t jobs for four out of every five unemployed workers. This is why nearly half of the unemployed have been out of work for more than six months, the maximum duration of state unemployment benefits.

In this environment, allowing extended unemployment benefits to expire would indeed make workers who have exhausted their aid more desperate to find work. But it wouldn’t make them more likely to find work, because the jobs don’t exist.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

UPDATE: I just came across this video of Sharron Angle, Republican Candidate for Senate (Nevada – Harry Reid’s state), who, prior to the passage of HR 4213 into law, stated that the unemployed are “afraid to get a job” are “entitled” and are “making more money on unemployment than they are getting one of those jobs”.

Well, at least she didn’t suggest that the unemployed be required to be drug tested before getting their UI checks, compare providing UI benefits to feeding stray animals or call the unemployed “hobos“.

We all know them, we all hate them, yet they somehow magically appear, polluting our workplace on a regular basis. Yes, I’m talking about those cute little notes with smarmy accusations thinly veiled as suggestions for the greater good. The best part is that these notes are usually anonymous, so no one can be immediately blamed for being passive agressive.

So how to deal with this petty annoyance in a constructive manner? Make fun of them, of course! Which my newest, very favoritest site, passiveagressivenotes.com does very, very well.

Laughing Squid posted this one today and in doing so, created a monster in me.

Here are a few others that tickled my fancy:

and of course, my favorite:

Last week, the Huffington Post made an example of 13 people who lost their respective jobs over the incredibly irresponsible use of Twitter

When will people learn that their own inane need to hear themselves talk can cost them their jobs? In each case, the medium was certainly NOT the message.

Like this guy:

(Thanks Scott)