Archive for the ‘Employee Rights’ Category
 Losing a job always brings financial hardship. Many who are unemployed struggle with paying bills on time, often ignoring them, not realizing that their tarnished credit history could become a barrier to finding a new job.
A recent study (conducted by the Society of Human Resource Management) has found that nearly 60% of employers run credit checks on job candidates. This is almost a 20% increase from just six years ago.
Many employers have been relying on credit histories in hiring decisions as indicators of a job candidate’s reliability. Even though there is little research showing a correlation between bad credit and poor job performance, an increased number of employers resort to credit checks.
Are you afraid that your less-than-perfect credit history may affect your job search? What can you do?
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 If you are unemployed and filing tax returns, you want to make sure not to miss out on many deductions available to job seekers. We have recently published Tax Tips to Maximize Your Refund This Year and by popular request decided to continue on that subject, putting together a list of job related expenses that you can and can’t write off this year:
The Ground Rules
In order to maximize your deductions and not get in trouble with IRS, it is important to understand the ground rules:
• You can only write off expenses for a job search in the same field in which you were formerly employed. In other words, you can’t write off job search expenses if you decide to switch to a different career.
• Unfortunately, if you just recently graduated and/or haven’t held a full time position, you are not entitled to writing off expenses associated with your first job search. The tax law only allows you to write off expenses incurred in searching for a position in your present occupation.
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 Unfortunately, by the time most employees learn that they are getting laid off, it is too late to do anything and unprepared employees get hurt the most. Some companies remain on a verge of a disaster for months, or even years. Some come crushing down overnight.
What can you do? Well, there are often warning signs that something is brewing inside the company. These signs may give you an opportunity to protect your benefits, save some money and start looking for a new job before you get a pink slip.
Here are a few tips:If your company is publicly traded, pay attention to its stock price. If the stock price consistently keeps dropping, this is not a very good sign. Overall, your company’s stock price, by definition, is one of the best evaluation indicators of how well a company is doing.
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 I have recently written about employment discrimination and found that my explanations regarding age discrimination became a subject of many heated discussions and controversy. Needless to say, it is a very sensitive subject. The purpose of my article was to help those who are being discriminated against by shedding some light on how employers look at things and why discrimination takes place. In my opinion, Job Seekers who have this understanding are better equipped for dealing with discrimination.
I am going to attempt to do this again. This time I will be focusing specifically on Age Discrimination and on myths and facts surrounding it:
What is Discrimination?
Princeton Dictionary defines discrimination as “unfair treatment of a person or group on the basis of prejudice rather than individual merit”. I strongly feel that treating job seekers unfairly simply because of their age is wrong and unjustified. At the same time, however, I feel that it is in an employer’s right to test job seekers’ abilities in order to determine if they are fit to perform duties as required by the job. I think it is wrong to require an employer to hire someone because of anti-discrimination laws if such individual is not the best choice for the job. To me, this is actually discrimination in reverse. For example, hiring a candidate to satisfy diversity requirement and simply because of their race and not their abilities, is actually discriminatory against other better-qualified candidates.
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 Body art is everywhere and most people can name at least one person they know who has some kind of body work done. People with tattoos work in a variety of industries and hold entry-level jobs, as well as, top executive positions. Based on the number of new tattoo parlors and the number of people getting tattooed, this trend doesn’t appear to be slowing any time soon.
So, is body art a workplace issue? Does having a visible tattoo say anything about an individual that is relevant to his or her job?
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 Unfortunately, discrimination during job search is widely spread in the United States and around the world. A topic about age discrimination became one of the most debated topics in our LinkedIn Job Search Group and we felt it is necessary to address the issue of employment discrimination in more detail.
It is illegal for employers to discriminate based on age, race, gender, religion beliefs, physical characteristics, disabilities, family status, and medical history in the United States. Nonetheless, many job seekers are facing just that every day. Discriminating at work is wrong and unjustified. However, before giving any advice on how to deal with it, we first need to understand some of the different types of discrimination and the reasons to why employers discriminate in the first place. As an employer, I can share some of the misunderstood reasoning (again, often not justifiable) that sometimes makes employers “look the other way”. Hopefully, by understanding these reasons better, we can formulate effective strategies for dealing with discrimination at work.
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 A recent study, conducted by the University of Sydney (Australia), has found that as far as wages, it appears that size really does matter. The study has shown that a 6-foot tall man earns $960 more on average per year, when compared to his colleagues who are just two inches shorter.
The study suggests that taller men earn more because they are perceived to be far more influential at work than shorter people. We often respect taller people more because they have a higher self esteem. Higher self esteem results in better communication skills and often taller people tend to appear more charismatic. Why is that? The explanation is simple – self esteem develops in adolescent years and then has an effect for the rest of the person’s life. Kids with a higher self esteem are more likely to join social groups where they will learn to interact and network with people (a skill that is very important in the business environment).
Andrew Leigh, the economist conducting the study, reports:
“After controlling for age, height, region and family background, participation in athletics is associated with an 11.4 percent increase in adult wages, and participation in every club other than athletics is associated with a 5.1 percent increase in wages.”
Gender also plays a role. For example, a 6-foot tall feet man can expect a 1.5% higher income compared to their average workmate, who is 5 feet 10 inches. However, according to the same studies, a woman would need an additional 4 inches in height to get a similar increase in earnings.
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 Senators Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and Charles Grassley (Iowa) have introduced legislation that would bar any company that lays off 50 or more employees from hiring foreign workers. The two lawmakers have already added H1B hiring restrictions to the financial bailout bill earlier this year, Computerworld reports. The new proposed legislation, called Employ America Act, can potentially affect a broad range of tech firms that continue hiring after laying off large numbers of employees. It will also apply to companies that hire H2B visa workers. H2B visas are mostly used in construction, health care, food service, and other industries.
“With the unemployment rate over 10%, companies that undertake mass layoffs shouldn’t need to hire foreign guest workers when there are plenty of qualified Americans looking for jobs,” said Grassley. According to the two senators, the high-tech industry alone has laid off more than 340,000 workers since August 2008.
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 I came across this interesting news today, the International Labor Union has released a list of companies that make their “Sweatshop Hall of Fame”.
The Sweatshop Hall of Shame 2010 highlights apparel and textile companies that use sweatshops in their global production. Hall of Shame inductees are responsible for evading fair labor standards and often are slow to respond or provide no response at all to any attempts by the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF), workers, or others to improve working conditions.
The official inductees of the 2010 Sweatshop Hall of Shame are: Abercrombie and Fitch, Gymboree, Hanes, Ikea, Kohl’s, LL Bean, Pier 1 Imports, Propper International, and Walmart. This list also includes an Honorable Mention to the American Apparel and Footwear Association, a national trade association representing apparel and footwear companies. This association has exhibited a flagrant disregard for workers’ rights by primarily focusing on maintaining trade with Honduras in the middle of a military coup.
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 Acting professionally at work is an important part of any corporate or work environment. It is also important for your professional and career growth. Most executive managers agree: professional behavior and attitudes often play an important role in who gets hired and promoted, as well as in who gets fired or demoted. If you want to have a successful career – you must know how to act professionally.
Many of us (so called “professionals”) often behave unprofessionally at work without even noticing it. Under certain circumstances this can have consequences. For example, it is great to be super-friendly with your boss, joking around the office, playing practical jokes on your co-workers, etc. Your boss may even think that you are the coolest guy/gal they have ever met. However, would they also think that you can be serious enough to handle an important task when it comes to that promotion you’ve been hoping for? Would they take you seriously?
We have asked several professionals if they had to dismiss an employee, would they choose the one who lacks good work habits or the one who lacks appropriate jobs skills. Here is what some of them told us:
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