Recently in Other Employment Law Issues Category

Chalk up another victim of the recession.

It turns out that the employment based health insurance decline is now a reality, reports Employer Brief. The information comes from a study done by the Employment Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).

Between 1995 and 2007, the percentage of workers covered either in their own name or as a dependent was around 60 percent, with some occasional fluctuations. However, by April 2010, only 56 percent of the workers had employment based health insurance.

A security company sued a former employee claiming that he stole multiple clients from the company, reports the Southeast Texas Record.

The aggrieved company, Patriot Security, believes that another company, S&S Investigations and Security, lured one of Patriot's employees, George Adams into revealing confidential information.

George Adams had signed an agreement with Patriot which said that he would keep all the company's information secret until at least five years after his resignation or termination. However, after he lost his job at Patriot Security last year, he allegedly shared the information with S&S.

A company alleged to have put the lives and limbs of its employees in danger was fined by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to the tune of $1 million, reports the Southeast Texas Record.

The offending company, Piping Technology and Products Inc. of Houston was found deficient on 13 willful and 17 serious violations of worker safety regulations in Houston.

OSHA’s allegations focused on the fact that the workers of the company were in danger of amputations and other serious injuries. These included dangers from machinery.

With the United States pulling out of Iraq, as reported by Reuters, it might be time to think about your returning military service employees.

Military service employees are covered by the Uniformed Services Employment and Re­em­ploy­­ment Rights Act (USERRA). It protects from discrimination those individuals lave a job for U.S. military service. Under the act, an employer must re-employ a service member if:

Trampling and stampeding are a few of the dangers associated with the Black Friday sales that occur the day after Thanksgiving, as the New York Times reported a while back.

To help retailers manage the extra flow of people during Houston’s Black Friday sales, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) put forward some guidelines that are aimed at helping store-owners and employers eliminate safety hazards. Below are just some of the OSHA guidelines for Black Friday sales as compiled by the researchers at FindLaw. They are organized in four different categories:

The Obama Administration has asked ICE’s voluntary immigration enforcement program to step up employer audits, reports the Associated Press, a move that has a lot of implications for Houston area businesses and Texas employers in general.

The program, called ICE Mutual Agreement Between Government and Employers, goes by the handy acronym of IMAGE. Officials believe that it reduces the chances of an employer hiring illiegal immigrants or those that use fake identification documents.

Is the walk from your work's parking area to place of employment fraught with dangers, like criminals or grizzly bears? You may feel better if you could keep a licensed gun stored in the company parking lot. But until now, you couldn't do that in Texas, because employers generally didn't allow (or want) their employees to bring guns onto their parking lots.

Well, maybe now you can. Texas Senate Bill 321 bars employers from preventing employees with a concealed handgun license from transporting or storing a firearm or ammunition in a locked, privately owned motor-vehicle in an employer-provided parking area, reports Employer Brief (registration required).

It has come to light that managers at an Apple logistics center are going to be put through training related to unionizing which will be called “union awareness.”

Via an internal Apple document obtained by news group CNET, it has been revealed that managers at one of the off-site logistical centers will be undergoing the union awareness training. The Apple union awareness document says:

The recession notwithstanding, the U.S. still affords a number of economic and employment opportunities not available in other countries. In fact, there is an entire area of business-related immigration to America, reports the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.

There are at least three kind of work-related visas:

• Temporary (nonimmigrant) Workers
• Permanent (immigrant) Workers
• Student and Exchange Visitors

If you are thinking about how to get a U.S. work visa in any of the above categories there are a number of steps to follow.

It seems that on the GOP-side of things, a political tussle is taking place regarding the positions that the candidates take towards illegal immigrants.

Therefore, this seems like a good time to review the duties and obligations employers have with respect to illegal immigrants under their employ, especially as these requirements have expanded through regulations promulgated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Employers in Texas are required to complete an employment eligibility verification through a I-9 form within three days after hiring an employee.