#employement law

[smithlawfirm]

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[peppermintmochafem]

Executive position femme domme in skirt and heels x butch secretary in suit.. is that anything??

[vyeoh]

I'm rewatching all the Marvel Defenders shows on Netflix and as much as I mock the MCU now, I need non-Marvel fans to understand that I was and still am a fan of "Daredevil fighting the gentrifying assshole who bought out the police force because ACAB both as a lawyer and vigilante of the community" and "Jessica Jones fighting the man who mind controlled her into doing unspeakable things and forming a community of fellow survivors and allies while dealing with PTSD in a range of both healthy and unhealthy ways" Marvel. God I love these idiots they carried so hard

[saintsenara]

I was recently reminded that Harry in his second year THREW A FIREWORK into an active potion across the classroom so that Hermione could steal rare and expensive ingredients. Any Chemistry teacher would’ve had him out on his ear for doing the same thing in a lab, never to return - stunts like that with chemicals could kill someone! Snape had some unfair (if realistic) reasons to dislike Harry, but a couple of extremely reasonable ones lol.

you're right and you should say it, anon. harry is a menace in that classroom.

this is, i think, one of the main reasons why any reading of snape by adults needs to engage properly with the genre conventions which govern his characterisation. because snape's exaggerated meanness is completely necessary to the role he plays in the story - and adult readers really need to treat that contextually, rather than foaming at the mouth about how upsetting a character in a children's story is for them - but, when he's looked at outside of those conventions... the man is having a nightmare at work.

child readers see things like harry yeeting a firework into a big bowl of chemicals and find it heroic and funny, as the story requires them to do, which means - as a result - that they find snape's reaction to him (and, especially, to neville, who is also a danger in the classroom, no matter what else we can say about snape's treatment of him) ridiculous and unfair.

but, obviously, as adults we can see things through a slightly more health-and-safety-focused lens and... yeah, as you say, if any of us had fucked about in chemistry at school like harry and ron fuck about in potions we would not have remained in the classroom for much longer...

all of the hogwarts teachers seem to have hellish jobs with no personal lives. and so we can all guess what the lesson is there...

join a union, kids.

[woefully-undercaffeinated]

What to do when something illegal happens at work

When your boss does something illegal at work, it's common to freeze up because you're not sure what to do. Here are a few tips for how to handle those situations during and after:

While it is happening:

Keep yourself safe. In the moment, your first priority is always to keep yourself and others from physical harm and out of danger as much as possible. If any other advice I give you conflicts with that, your safety takes priority.

Make sure you know where you are. If you think your safety might be at risk, getting your bearings can be critically important. Take note of potential exit routes, hazards, the flow of traffic (both vehicle and foot traffic), cameras, and any safe areas you know of. Later, knowledge of your exact location may be very important in reconstructing events.

Check the time. Knowing exactly when something happened, and how long it took, will be extremely valuable.

Look around for witnesses, and try to bring some over if possible. Witnesses will both reduce the likelihood of more outrageous behavior and help you to take action afterwards. Do your best to remember who was there.

Say "please let me finish" every time you're interrupted, and count the number of times it happened. Bullies love to interrupt people at the first sign of disagreement, and then later they'll claim that nobody disagreed with them when instead nobody could get in a word edgewise. Saying "please let me finish" calls out the fact that they were interrupting, and a count of the times you were interrupted will help you protect yourself from being misinterpreted later.

Avoid agreeing to anything or signing anything if possible. You have the right to review any document that you're asked to sign, which usually includes taking the document and having it examined by an attorney. If you're being threatened with serious consequences if you don't sign immediately, write "signed under duress". If they're asking for a verbal agreement, try to get them to accept a "let me think about it/check my to-do list/etc" rather than a hard "yes". Even if the thing you'd be agreeing to is something you're okay with, it's still important not to agree to things when you don't feel like you're allowed to say "no"; in stressful situations, our judgment can be seriously compromised, and allowing yourself to be bullied into saying "yes" will set a bad precedent for further interactions.

After it's over, as soon as you're in a safe place:

Complete the WTWFU checklist

Send a follow-up email summarizing your understanding of what was communicated. It can be as simple as "just to ensure we understood each other, what I got was that you were telling me/us that [we'll be disciplined if we discuss our wages/contacting a union is a fireable offense/our pay will be docked if anyone submits a complaint to OSHA/etc], is that correct?". If there is information that protects you, such as a health condition or pregnancy you need accommodation for or a prior agreement that is being violated, include it in your email even if the company already knows. CC HR and any coworkers who were present and BCC your personal email*. Forward any responses to your personal email as well*.

Rescind any agreements you made. Either in the same email as step #2 or in a separate email, depending on what you think is appropriate, say "I didn't feel like I could safely say 'no' in that situation, so I'd like to rescind my earlier agreement until I've had some time to reconsider." If it's something you think you'd have otherwise agreed to, try to offer a time frame for an actual decision. CC HR and BCC your personal email*.

Collect any evidence you can, and make note of any evidence that exists but isn't accessible to you. This includes emails about the issue, any photos that were already taken or that you can safely and legally take,

If something illegal was done or hinted at, contact the applicable regulatory agency as soon as possible with all of the information above.

Consider arranging a consult with an employment law attorney -- consults aren't the same as retainers, they're considerably cheaper (or sometimes free, depending on your income and the possibility of a lawsuit) and can either turn into ongoing representation or just be a one-time service.

* Don't include information that you have a legitimate duty to safeguard, such as customer data, protected health information, or non-public market-affecting information. This does not include any information pertaining to working conditions, your compensation, regulatory compliance, or workplace safety -- the company isn't allowed to demand that you keep those a secret. Either try to get the point across without including the specific information that's being safeguarded, or censor it by replacing it with two underscores per replacement with generic descreptors as necessary (i.e. 'I have safety concerns about the release of our secret robotics project on January 10' becomes 'I have safety concerns about the release of our __[project]__ on __[date]__').

[gwydionmisha]

Republicans are lying when they say they care about the safety and wellbeing of children.

[naritaren]

This AEW disciplinary committee shouldn't exist. AEW should just hire a fucking HR department. Sure, the lawyers are fine, but at no point should an active wrestler be doling out discipline to anyone. That's super sketchy from an employment law side of things.

It's a lawsuit just waiting to fucking happen. Those two lawyers SHOULD KNOW THAT.

[freakurodani]

*gets promoted to a position where i no longer have to wear a uniform*

*my coworkers suddenly start asking if im a they*

[queerofthedagger]

people not in those fields really have no idea of the kind of exhaustion that comes with jobs in the social sector. which is in no way to say that other jobs aren't as or more exhausting but there is just something to being responsible for handling someone's psychological/medical/personal crises, to being restricted by structural and general circumstances, to being so empathetic to how Shit Sucks, but also needing to protect yourself and your coworkers etc etc etc that brings such a mental static sound kind of psychological exhaustion with it that i cannot put into words. i need to lie face down on the floor for three hours and soak my brain in nacl. any personal or friend crises are put on ice till i have capacity again. good fucking lord

[awkward-teabag]

I keep seeing people respond to the Microsoft Recall bullshit with there's an ability to disable it and that misses the point. Several points in fact.

It's only a matter of time until an update bugs/"bugs" it and re-enables it without warning so people who had previously disabled it think they're in the clear until their info is leaked or they get a warning they're low on storage space.

If people don't have admin rights, they may not be able to disable it. Laptops given by work or school lock down what people can do with them, some going as far as dictating which browser one has to use on them. Even if you don't need admin rights to disable Recall, you may not have the ability to do so without losing the laptop and/or job and/or education.

I'm unsure of how it would handle multiple accounts but if it can be locked by someone else to always be enabled, children and people in abusive situations would also be unable to disable it. Even if it can't be locked, disabling it could result in punishment from a parent or the abuser.

Is it really disabled or is it "disabled" in that what the user sees is it being disabled while it's still collecting information and/or sending information to Microsoft in the background?

Such a feature should never have been automatically enabled in the first place. It's bad, predatory design to have such a feature enabled from the start and to expect users AKA customers to go out of their way to look up and then opt-out of something.

If disabling it really disables it, it can still result in stress and concern that it's not. The vast majority of people do not have the skills or knowledge to look into the OS guts to give themselves peace of mind that it really truly is disabled.

I'm sure I'm missing some, too.

TLDR is disabling is a bandaid someone else may rip off for you, someone may hurt you if you use, it may not work at all except as a placebo, and should have never been needed in the first place.

[yeltsinsstar]

https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSRvVv8c4/

[us-laws-you-should-know]

Work Expenses: Who Pays?

There are all sorts of work-related expenses out there that an employee might have to face, from the cost of their work uniform to the cost of cleaning their work uniform to bills for the cell phone they use for work calls to the cost of that laptop used for working from home.

The question is, under the law, when is the employer mandated to pay for such expenses, rather than leaving them to the individual employee to bear?

Summary: Under federal law, the only requirement is that expenses not bring employees' pay under minimum wage.

California and Illinois say the employer must cover "necessary expenditures and losses" including remote work equipment.

Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota also say the employer must cover all the employee "expends or loses" due to work.

Washington D.C. says the employer must pay for required tools.

Iowa, New York, and New Hampshire require that the expenses be "authorized" by the employer or that employer and employee have an "agreement" beforehand for the employer to be liable for the costs. Iowa says such costs must be reimbursed within 30 days.

Minnesota requires that employee-paid work expenses be limited to $50 a month, and that the employer reimburse such costs at the end of the employee's employment.

Massachusetts requires that employers pay transportation expenses and the cost of uniforms specifically.

Federal law says only that if the employee's paying for expenses, that can't be used to effectively bring their wages below minimum wage level. So, if you're making minimum wage at a McDonald's, your employer can't then take the price of your work uniform out of your first paycheck, because then you'd effectively be making less than minimum wage.

This doesn't just apply to expenses directly paid to the employer, either; the statute specifically says that if the employee is required to buy their own tools required for a job, they have to be reimbursed if that would mean their pay going below minimum wage after deducting the cost of the tools from their pay.

But this only comes into play in connection to minimum wage. If your pay is high enough that your work expenses would still leave you above minimum wage, federal law doesn't say anything else making your employer liable for the cost.

But that's federal law. US law in general, and especially labor law, often has more specific restrictions within certain states, and this is no exception.

California law says that the employer has to pay for "all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties". In other words, if it's necessary for the job, under California law, the employer should be footing the bill. What counts as a "necessary expenditure or loss"? Excellent question. No definition is given for this in the statute, so it's all open for debate... though a recent court case suggests it includes remote working equipment, including for jobs that are normally in-person but went to remote work during the lockdown.

Illinois state law uses similar wording, with the employer paying for "all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee within the employee's scope of employment and directly related to services performed for the employer." Illinois' statute does actually give a bit more definition to what counts as "necessary" here, however, and a 2023 amendment included specific factors to weigh when determining whether an expense is "necessary" and therefore should be paid by the employer. Like California, Illinois has specified that remote work equipment counts here.

Montana is similar as well, using the wording "all that he necessarily expends or loses in direct consequence of the discharge of his duties", as long as it's not "in consequence of the ordinary risks of the business in which he is employed." North Dakota's wording is nearly identical, with "all that the employee necessarily expends or loses in direct consequence of the discharge of the employee's duties as such" unless it's tools or equipment "also used by the employee outside the scope of employment". South Dakota also has similar wording, "all that the employee necessarily expends or loses in direct consequence of the discharge of the employee's duties".

Washington, D.C. law has the employer paying "the cost of purchasing and maintaining any tools required of the employee in the performance of the business of the employer."

Iowa's version is stricter, saying that the expense must be "authorized by the employer", but also sets a timetable, saying that such expenses must be reimbursed within thirty days' time. Similarly, New York says that the issue arises after there is an "agreement" between employer and employee about the expenses, and New Hampshire says that it must be "at the request of the employer".

Minnesota's got a different take on it--employers can make employees foot the bill, but once the employment ends, the employer has to pay the employee back for uniforms, equipment, supplies, and travel expenses that aren't just regular commuting. Also the initial out-of-pocket cost to the employee for such things can't be more than $50 a month. Although there's some weird exceptions and additional specifics for employees of motor vehicle dealers...

Massachusetts law specifically requires payment of "transportation expenses" and uniforms by the employer, with a definition given for what does and does not count as a uniform. The cost of uniform cleaning is covered if it requires "dry-cleaning, commercial laundering, or other special treatment".

Note that this is all assuming the employee would pay directly; laws vary somewhat if it is instead the employee charging (real, believed, and/or fraudulent) work expenses to a company card or account directly.

[tsarnvoiny]

Nothing like stressing about losing your job for having to call out for throwing up.

[slut-jpeg]

talking to able bodied people about being disabled is exhausting lol

[spicyvampire]

Tinn ripping the check apart and throwing it at Charn : get the fuck out

Charn : I desire you carnally

[kinneys]

in the kim mesa verda x doc review portion of my BCS rewatch and genuinely is this even legal? kim is a 4th year associate and she's being stuck with like what interns? students? doing work way way below her training grade for an indefinite amount of time, completely dependent on the arbitrary and capricious whims of her boss, fundamentally to punish her for the actions of a DIFFERENT lawyer at a DIFFERENT firm? actions for which kim is 0% responsible for???? jimmy's right she should sue their asses into oblivion!!!