On June 20, 2008, I gave my 4th seminar in the last 2 years for the City of Chicago’s Department of Business Affairs and Licensing. Like my prior seminars for them, it focused on labor and employment law for small and medium sized businesses (2-1,000 employees). The handout for this, which reflects 2008 legal changes, [...]
Vajdl v. Mesabi Academy of Kidspeace, 10th Cir.
Amicus Brief
Filed September 11, 2006
IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT
______________________
[...]
Ellis v. United Parcel Service, decided this week by the 7th Circuit, is legally interesting in its dealing with the issues of interracial dating, race discrimination, and the ultimate lawfulness of UPS's termination of a manager for violating its nonfraternization policy. What's more interesting to me, though, is the Court's cautionary words on the issue of whether a nonfraternization policy makes good business sense:
In closing, we emphasize that our decision today should not be construed as an endorsement of the UPS nonfraternization policy. When a company like UPS runs expensive ads that ask "What can Brown do for you?" it might be wise for it to ask if this policy is really worth all of the fuss this case has created. As we observed in Hennessy v. Penril Datacomm Networks, Inc., 69
I'm pulling double duty today. In addition to my regular posts here, I'm also guest blogging at the Connecticut Employment Law Blog to cover for Dan Schwartz while he's in trial. Click on over to Dan's outstanding blog (and I'm not just saying that because of my guest post) and take a look at my thoughts on the federal Healthy Families Act. While your there, be sure to subscribe and add Dan to your feed reader.Presented by Kohrman Jackson & Krantz
Owners and managers of small businesses in the UK are being urged to ensure they understand what they may and may not legally ask a candidate during the recruitment process and how to stay on the right side of employment law. Consumer group ‘Which?’ has published a new handbook advising potential [...]
When a person comes under attack at work and decides they want to know more information about employment law and their overall rights, they often don’t know where to turn. From personal experience, I know what it’s like to go on a mad Internet search to find out what applicable laws and statutes are relevant to a race-based complaint at work.If you are making complaints about race-based workplace abuses, in many cases you aren’t going to necessarily trust your company’s HR department to be extremely truthful. After all, the company HR department isn’t automatically going to behave as a neutral party and may be assisting in efforts to silence your complaint about illegal mistreatment.I came across an interesting resource. The NOLO web site (a legal resource) has a great research tool that will allow you to look for specific employment law statutes and cases. The site allows you to input key search terms or the title number and section number of a specific U.S. Code—if you al
The City of Chicago's Department of Business Affairs & Licensing has asked me to do another employment law seminar (my 3rd). This free seminar will be on Wednesday, August 15, 2007, from 3pm-4:30pm at City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St., Room 805. Like my prior seminars, this will be largely Q&A and round-table discussion. Additionally, I'll be providing participants with a 19-page
Reader, Michael W., emailed me the below question about starting his own management side employment law practice in New York City. My answer follows his question.
I am interested in starting my own law practice in New York City, representing management in employment discrimination cases. I believe there is a real economic opportunity in this area for high-quality solo or small-firm lawyers
On Thursday, May 24, 6 p.m.-8 p.m., I'll be giving a free labor and employment law seminar sponsored by Illinois SBDC at the Technology Innovation Center in Evanston. It's at the Evanston Public Library, 1703 Orrington Ave. (intersection of Orrington & Church St.). Parking is available; check their website. Registration is via e-mail to Victoria Gheorghe, the SBDC's Director, v.gheorghe@
On Monday, December 11, 2006, I'll be conducting a labor and employment law seminar at the Illinois Institute of Technology's (IIT) Stuart Graduate School of Business, at the Kent College of Law, for a group of 21 government officials and business people from the northern Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. They're studying at the Stuart School and obtaining some certification in business, although I'm not really aware of the specifics.
Thanks to Harry Lepinske, President of the Central Asian Productivity Research Center, for setting this up.
On Wednesday, November 15, 2006, from 3pm-4:30pm, I'll be conducting a free employment law seminar at Chicago's City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St., Room 805. This will be largely Q&A and round-table discussion. Additionally, I'll be providing participants with a 14 page handout summarizing 55 federal, state and local labor and employment laws, and explaining what human resources and labor and employment law are, what can be asked of job applicants via interviews and applications, and how much an employment dispute could cost. Thanks to the Community Economic Development Law Project (Angela Hall and Loren VanDyke www.cedlp.org) and the City of Chicago's Department of Business Affairs & Licensing (Anthony Bertuca) for organizing this. If you would like to attend either contact me or the DBA.
My program "Understanding Employment Law" is scheduled for Friday, October 6, 2006, from 8:30am until noon. It's the final presentation for the Chicago Minority Business Development Council (CMBDC) and Chicago Minority Business Opportunity Center's 2-day Corporate Bridges event.
During my program, I'll examine how employment laws impact a business' bottom line. I'll examine the do's and don'ts of hiring, firing, promoting and other HR concerns.
Corporate Bridges is an educational program for minority business owners and managers. It's intended to promote skills that help minority business owners and operators run a successful enterprise.
The cost of the complete 2-day program is $45.00. This includes all 3 sessions (session 1 is marketing, session 2 is improving operations and profitability, and session 3—me). For complete program information check out the CMBDC's webiste's "Calendar of Events" link and scroll down to "Corporate Bridges."
The g
On October 6, 2006, I'll be presenting a 3 1/2-hour seminar, entitled "Understanding Employment Law," at the Chicago Minority Business Development Council, Inc. (CMBDC;
www.cmbdc.org
) and the Chicago Minority Business Opportunity Center's (Chicago MBOC;
www.mbda.gov
) annual Corporate Bridges event.
The event is sponsored by the Northern Trust Company and Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., and it's scheduled to take place on October 5th and 6th in the Northern Trust Company offices located at 50 South LaSalle Street in Chicago.
The purpose of Corporate Bridges is to provide an education forum for minority owned business owners and managers to receive working knowledge of management practices used by successful organizations. Additionally, the interaction of participants, instructors and sponsors provides a valuable network of business contacts.
CMBDC has been a premier organization for increasing value-added business opportunities between major buying organizations and mi
Click on image a couple of times to fully enlarge.On Tuesday, April 25 from 10 A.M.-12 P.M., I'll be presenting a labor and employment law seminar at the University of Illinois Chicago's Center for Urban Business (CUB) and Small Business Development Center (SBDC). The address is 601 S. Morgan Street (Harrison and Morgan Street intersection), conference room #2350 UH (23rd floor of University Hall; the tallest building on campus). The pre-registration fee is $30; the walk-in fee is $40. As with most of my seminars, I intend for this to emphasize Q & A, and roundtable discussion. I'll relate what may appear to be separate or distinct issues into the larger framework of human resources and labor and employment law. My introductory remarks will be in the nature of defining human resources, labor and employee relations and explaining how politics, the judiciary, business and public advocates shape U.S. labor and employment law. Additionally, I'll provide participants with w
For my employment law seminar at Evanston/Northwestern's Small Business Development Center (SBDC), I created a 6 page handout summarizing 44 federal and Illinois labor and employment laws small to medium sized businesses might encounter. The format of the handout is an MS Word table.
But, tables don't convert to Blogspot. Consequently, instead of spending hours trying to convert the handout to Blogspot's interface and posting it here, I've decided that if any readers are interested in obtaining either an MS Word or PDF version of the handout, I'll e-mail it to you.
So, if anyone would like a copy of this 6 page handout which summarizes 44 federal and Illinois labor and employment laws, I'd be glad to e-mail it you. Just e-mail me at (charlesakrugel@gmail.com) or post your request to my blog, and please specify whether you'd like a PDF or MS Word version (or both).
On 12/8/05, Dr. Tom Rogers and Jim Velos of The Rogers Group (www.drtomrogers.com), interviewed me on their Voice America Business channel program, "Business Dis-eases: Cure Them or Die" The direct link for the interview is: http://voiceamerica.com/common/check.php?url=http://wm.kinodigital.na-central.speedera.net/wm.kinodigital.na-central/surfnetmediagroup/010183/Rogers120805.wma. The website URL for Voice America's Business channel is www.business.voiceamerica.com. For 45 minutes, the duration of the interview, we examined how labor and employment legal costs can cripple or kill a business. I thought that for my blawg it would be great to summarize the interview and provide additional commentary, which couldn't be included in the interview due to time constraints. This might help educate readers about the importance of human resources (HR) and HR cost containment. However, I think the first order of business should be to provide you with a definition of HR, labor and
As a management side labor and employment attorney and human resources (HR) consultant, I have more than 10 years of experience in the field and have been running my own practice for 4 1/2 years. Furthermore, commencing 2005, I have formed an alliance with the Human Resource Store (HR Store), www.hrstore.com. The HR Store is a professional employer organization specializing in the delivery of "A-Z" human resources services to clients. With the HR Store, I am the Director of Legal and Compliance related services; i.e., I provide labor and employment law counsel and representation to our clients.
In my own practice, my clientele includes small to medium sized technology, e-commerce, manufacturing, distribution, transportation and services companies. In addition to providing traditional labor and employment law representation, I represent companies desiring to institute preventive and proactive HR functions. These functions include policies, procedures and programs, which act as cata
Based on the success of my 1st seminar, the City of Chicago's Department of Business Affairs & Licensing has asked me to do a 2nd employment law seminar. This free seminar will be on Wednesday, January 17, 2007, from 3pm-4:30pm at City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle St., Room 805. Like my November 15, 2006, seminar, this will be largely Q&A and round-table discussion. Additionally, I'll be
