As organizations across the United States continually redesign the concept of "the office," employers are required to adhere to employment laws that are not well-equipped to deal with the modern workplace. The Family Medical Leave Act is a good example of one such law.Take, for example, a web-design company with 95 employees. Assume this Company has only two offices, one in Michigan that employs five employees and one in California that employs 45 employees. The remaining 45 employees are telecommuters, scattered across the country, work from home, and none are within 75 miles of each other or the two corporate offices. Are any of these employees eligible for FMLA leave? As you might expect, the answer is not a simple one.There is little doubt the Company is covered by the FMLA. Regulations state that employers who employ 50 or more employees for each working day during 20 or more calendar workweeks in either the current or preceding calendar year are covered by the FMLA. 29 … [Read more...] about Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA): Telecommuters, Offsite Employees and the Modern Workplace
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How a Chinese-American family challenged school segregation in 1920s Mississippi (podcast)
Almost 30 years before Linda Brown and her parents took on the Topeka Board of Education in Brown v. Board of Education, Martha Lum’s parents Jeu Gong and Katherine sued to try to stop Rosedale, Mississippi, from barring their Chinese-American children from the local “white” school. Their case, Gong Lum v. Rice, made it to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927. But rather than granting them relief, the unanimous U.S. Supreme Court decision led to even stricter school segregation.For this episode of the Modern Law Library, in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles discusses this little-known chapter of history with Adrienne Berard. Berard is the author of Water Tossing Boulders: How a Family of Chinese Immigrants Led the First Fight to Desegregate Schools in the Jim Crow South. Berard discusses the bravery of the family’s decision, and the complicated state of race relations in 1920s Mississippi in which the debate over … [Read more...] about How a Chinese-American family challenged school segregation in 1920s Mississippi (podcast)
UK Employment Law Update: Government Consultation on “Modern Workplaces”
The UK Government has announced that it is going to consult on the “modern workplace” with a view to making legislative changes in 2015. The consultation is proposing changes in three key areas: flexible parental leave, flexible working and equal pay. The main propositions under each of those headings are:an entitlement for fathers to attend two antenatal appointments (unpaid); an 18 week period of maternity leave, exclusively for mothers, to be taken around the time of the baby’s birth; the remaining 34 week period of maternity leave would be capable of being shared between both parents; an entitlement for fathers to receive an extra 4 weeks of paternity leave (in addition to the current 2 week entitlement); and each parent would also be entitled to an additional 4 weeks of paid leave. the right to request flexible working for all employees (i.e. not just those with children) who have been employed for a continuous period of 26 weeks would remain; the statutory … [Read more...] about UK Employment Law Update: Government Consultation on “Modern Workplaces”
Modern Day Slavery: Seif Kousmate’s Photos of the Haratins in Mauritania Reveal Their misery—and Got Him Jailed
World The Mauritanian government doesn’t want you to know that 10 to 20 percent of its people are enslaved. Officials don’t want you to think about how the West African country was the last to abolish slavery, in 1981, and didn’t criminalize the practice until just over a decade ago, in 2007. They don’t want you to imagine the conditions of the former slaves, known as Haratin, who now form Mauritania’s lowest caste, living in extreme poverty under a regime that denies them access to work, education and the basic rights that come along with citizenship.And they certainly don’t want you to see it.That’s why when Seif Kousmate, a photographer based in Morocco, set out to capture the everyday lives of the country’s Haratin people, Mauritanian authorities arrested, jailed and interrogated him. They released Kousmate four days later, returning his laptop and camera, but held on to multiple memory cards with photos he’d taken during the … [Read more...] about Modern Day Slavery: Seif Kousmate’s Photos of the Haratins in Mauritania Reveal Their misery—and Got Him Jailed
Chinese Media Foreshadows End of Family Planning Policies
China’s state-run media was keenly interested in a Monday column from Bloomberg News reporting that Beijing is thinking about scrapping its 40-year-old family planning policy and allowing Chinese citizens to have as many children as they want. According to Bloomberg, China’s State Council – roughly equivalent to a presidential cabinet – is researching the repercussions of lifting the restrictions on family size and could announce the end of birth limits as early as the fourth quarter of 2018. One of the sources for the report said China’s leadership “wants to reduce the pace of aging in China’s population and remove a source of international criticism.” In other words, China is embarrassed by international criticism of its authoritarian policies. Also, as a subsequent Bloomberg op-ed put it, “China doesn’t want to become the next Japan.” Japan is coping with a demographic collapse unlike anything seen in the modern … [Read more...] about Chinese Media Foreshadows End of Family Planning Policies