Rick Bell – Page 49

October 19, 2018June 29, 2023

OSHA Softens Stance on Safety Incentive Programs, Post-incident Drug Tests

It’s been two years since OSHA announced its hard-line interpretation of its then newly announced anti-retaliation rules — that using incentive programs to penalize workers for reporting work-related injuries or illnesses, and that conducting post-incident drug testing without a reasonable possibility that employee drug use could have contributed to the reported injury or illness, constitutes unlawful retaliation under OSHA.

Last week, OSHA published a memo that specifically clarifies that it “does not prohibit workplace safety incentive programs or post-incident drug testing.” [emphasis in original]

What does this mean?

Incentive Programs

One example of an incentive programs is one that rewards workers for reporting near-misses or safety hazards. According to OSHA, “Positive action taken under this type of program is always permissible.”

Another example rewards employees with a prize or bonus at the end of an injury-free month, or evaluates (and bonuses) managers based on their work unit’s lack of injuries. According to OSHA, these programs are also permissible, “as long as they are not implemented in a manner that discourages reporting.”

According to OSHA:

If an employer takes a negative action against an employee under a rate-based incentive program, such as withholding a prize or bonus because of a reported injury, OSHA would not cite the employer [for retaliation] as long as the employer has implemented adequate precautions to ensure that employees feel free to report an injury or illness.

What are “adequate precautions to ensure that employees feel free to report an injury or illness?”

An incentive program that rewards employees for identifying unsafe conditions in the workplace;
A training program for all employees to reinforce reporting rights and responsibilities and emphasizes the employer’s non-retaliation policy;
A mechanism for accurately evaluating employees’ willingness to report injuries and illnesses.

Post-Accident Drug Testing

According to OSHA, “most instances of workplace drug testing are permissible.” Examples of permissible drug testing include:

Random drug testing.
Drug testing unrelated to the reporting of a work-related injury or illness.
Drug testing under a state workers’ compensation law.
Drug testing under other federal law, such as a U.S. Department of Transportation rule.
Drug testing to evaluate the root cause of a workplace incident that harmed or could have harmed employees. If the employer chooses to use drug testing to investigate the incident, the employer should test all employees whose conduct could have contributed to the incident, not just employees who reported injuries.

Employers no longer need a nexus between the possible or suspected drug use and the reported injury or illness.

If you have questions about implementing or modifying a workplace safety incentive program, or a post-accident drug testing program, contact your Occupational Safety & Health team.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

October 18, 2018June 29, 2023

When Dealing With D&I Naysayers, Avoid These 3 Pitfalls

It’s tempting to focus on the naysayer. It’s easy to give those loud voices of dissent all our attention. It’s not our fault.

We evolved to be somewhat anxious and pessimistic since hedging our bets and lowering our risks kept our ancestors safe. We focus on the loud voices of dissent because they might be right, and heeding their warnings might avert disaster. But sometimes the naysayers are simply afraid, and not only is there no significant danger in the valley beyond, its abundance could sustain us for generations to come.

When it comes to leading diversity and inclusion efforts in an organization, there are three major pitfalls in the way D&I champions treat D&I naysayers.

Allowing efforts to be distracted or derailed by the naysayers. Change theorists have found about 14 percent of people are “early adopters” who immediately jump on board with a new idea, while up to 15 percent resist. D&I changemakers who focus most of their attention on converting the small minority of D&I naysayers allow early adopters to languish with no direction for their crusading energy. Meanwhile, the undecided or neutral majority stays neutral — or worse, begins to be swayed by the naysayers. Either way, precious time and opportunities are lost.
Ignoring the naysayers’ voices completely. Depending on who the naysayers are and what they’re saying, ignoring their voices completely can stall or destroy progress. When I was the internal D&I changemaker in a former organization, I made a critical error by trying to minimize and circumvent a naysayer who also happened to be the chief human resources officer. While his political influence was waning, and that of my C-suite boss was on the rise, the CHRO still had the ear of the CEO, and he was the ultimate decision maker regarding personnel policies and the training and leadership development department. If I had been more strategic in my relationship building and more patient with the pace of power shifts in my organization, we could have gained traction more quickly and I could have increased my credibility and influence more easily.
Dismissing or shutting down naysayers during trainings. An unskilled facilitator may minimize the questions or opinions of a person pushing back on D&I concepts during training, communicating indirectly (sometimes directly) that their point of view is less important than others in the room. The facilitator may try to convince the naysayer to “get on board,” wasting precious time proselytizing to the D&I naysayer while neglecting the session objectives and ignoring other participants’ learning needs. Both tactics are ineffective because they are not inclusive behaviors and therefore lack integrity with D&I principles. The first is disrespectful to the naysayer; the second is disrespectful to the entire group. Both are unwise because D&I naysayers are often bright, caring people who raise valid concerns, or important fears that must be taken seriously and addressed to ensure the success of the initiative, especially if the naysayer is a major stakeholder!

To avoid these three pitfalls, implement the following best practices for easier, quicker D&I success:

Harness the enthusiasm of the early adopters. Give formal and informal D&I champions something to do right away. Make sure these tasks are meaningful and aligned with broader strategic D&I goals so you don’t waste energy and lose momentum.
Focus on converting the undecided middle. Harnessing the early adopters will do much of this work for you. In addition, determine what the barriers are for the undecided. Are they overworked? Tired of flavor-of-the-month initiatives, waiting to see if this one is for real? Unsure why the organization is launching a D&I initiative? Unsure what it has to do with their job? Invest in internal marketing and communication to ensure your messaging is simple, accurate, inspirational, aligned and addressing the barriers of the undecided. Tell people what to expect, why it matters, and how they can contribute. Also, give change time!
Listen to, and involve, the D&I naysayers. This may be especially difficult for D&I changemakers if the naysayers represent a demographic or political affiliation the changemakers find difficult or threatening. But naysayers typically express their concerns because they care about the organization and want to make a difference, and inclusion includes everyone. Listen openly and with curiosity to their concerns — one-on-one, in training sessions, and in meetings. Role model inclusive leadership by checking your assumptions and seeking to understand. The naysayer may give you the gift of identifying a misperception that can be clarified, a valid concern that must be addressed, or a blind spot you missed. I’ve found that some naysayers become powerful allies once they’ve been heard, taken seriously and included in problem solving.

Leverage the skills and energy of your natural champions, focus most of your efforts on the undecided middle and don’t ignore the power of the D&I naysayer. Because while any change requires fired-up champions equipped with the proper tools, there are few with more zeal than the convert!

Susana Rinderle is a principal consultant with Korn Ferry, and a coach, speaker, author and diversity and inclusion expert. The postings on this website represent my own personal views and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of Korn Ferry International or any other organization with which I may be affiliated. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com.

October 17, 2018June 29, 2023

Timing of Retaliation Is Key Factor to Reinstating Employee Suit

“See something, say something” is one of the most important elements of any workplace intent on stopping harassment.

Employers are supposed to empower employees to report any harassment they witness, whether or not they are the target. Key to this idea is ensuring that employees who report harassment do not suffer retaliation as result. Retaliation of any kind will chill efforts of employees to say what they see.

With this background in mind, consider Donley v. Stryker Sales Corp. (7th Cir. 10/15/18) [pdf].

Kelley Donley, a manager for a medical technology firm, learned from co-workers that a manager had sexually harassed a subordinate. She exercised her right to file a harassment complaint against the manager with Stryker’s human resources director. That complaint triggered an investigation, which resulted in the manager’s termination.

Approximately one day after the manager’s firing, Stryker launched an investigation into Donley. The investigation focused on an incident six weeks earlier at a team meeting in Colorado, in which it was alleged that Donley had photographed the intoxicated CEO of one of Stryker’s vendors, and shared the photos with co-workers. The company fired Donley because “taking photographs of a valued partner while intoxicated was unacceptable.”

The 7th Circuit ruled that the trial court had improperly dismissed Donley’s retaliation lawsuit.

Donley’s timeline … exposes inconsistencies and contradictions … of why Stryker began the investigation that ended with Donley’s discharge. If the disputed facts are resolved in Donley’s favor, a reasonable jury could interpret the suspicious timing as evidence (a) that one or both decision‐makers initially found Donley’s actions in the Vail incident to be tolerable, and (b) that they decided only later, after she had filed her internal complaint, to use that incident as a pretext to fire her for retaliatory reasons.

What lessons can we learn from this case?

1. Do not sit on allegations of workplace misconduct. If something is inappropriate today, the passage of time will not make it more inappropriate tomorrow. Indeed, waiting to take disciplinary action raises questions as to why you did not take action sooner. If protected conduct intervenes, the inference will be (as it was in this case), that retaliation motivated your ultimate (and untimely) decision to act.
2. Adverse actions taken on the heels of protected activity is very dangerous. This is not to say that you can never discipline or fire an employee shortly after they engage in protected activity. Yet, if you are going to terminate an employee on the heels of any protected activity, you best have all of your ducks in a row. Employees who engage in protected activity aren’t bulletproof from termination. But, you better be sure you’re using the right ammo. If there can be any doubt about your motivation, you take a huge risk in firing an employee on this timeline.

October 17, 2018October 28, 2020

Employers Find Sports Score Employee Engagement and Retention Points

employee engagement and retention, employee performance

The Major League Baseball postseason is well underway with some games taking place during normal work hours.

The Chicago Cubs had their midday National League tiebreaker on a Monday, while Game 3 of Houston Astros-Cleveland Indians in the American League Division Series also was a mid-afternoon start. Games happening early in the day has both hurt and helped workplaces nationwide.

When sporting events occur during work hours, employers could face productivity issues, which can include employees calling in sick, leaving early or arriving late. But there’s an opportunity to flip that thinking and use such events as an employee engagement and retention tool.

Joyce Maroney, executive director of the Workforce Institute at workforce management software company Kronos Inc., studies workplace issues and ways to manage and engage workers. Maroney said one of the ways employers can avoid these issues is by making the sporting event available in the office, whether on TV in a break room or conference room, or an office-watch party with food provided.

“It can definitely be a tool to stimulate camaraderie, just as would be departments having gatherings during the holiday season, or doing a charity event together,” Maroney said. “All these things engage people at work and can make people feel like they’re part of something that’s a little bigger than just getting the job done.”

Maroney may be onto something.

A survey conducted in March 2018 by employee and recruitment agency Randstad U.S. said 79 percent of employees believe sporting events in the office “greatly improves their levels of engagement at work.” In the same study, 73 percent of workers say they look forward to going to work more when they participate in office sports bracket contests like college basketball’s March Madness tournament. Also, a 2017 study conducted by employee time-management app TSheets found that 68 percent of employees said watching games increases or has no effect on their productivity.

Chicago-based staffing and recruiting firm LaSalle Network embraces sports in its office. The big sporting events they consider as employee engagement and retention tools in the workplace are March Madness, the Olympics and the World Cup soccer.

Founder and CEO Tom Gimbel said doing this has resulted in better relationships with fellow employees and clients as they have a viewing party for the annual March Madness tournament.

“It empowers employees because they don’t have to sneak around to participate in something they enjoy,” Gimbel said. “It also makes our clients feel valued. We want them to know we appreciate our relationships with them. It helps builds trust.”

The Super Bowl, arguably the biggest U.S.-based sporting event every year, normally attracts over 100 million viewers annually. Even those who don’t consider themselves sports fans watch the Big Game.

Research conducted before this year’s Super Bowl by the Workforce Institute at Kronos and Mucinex found that nearly 14 million employed Americans planned to call out of work after watching the game. Another 25 percent of working Americans, 38.5 million people, said the Monday after the Super Bowl should be considered a national holiday.

https://soundcloud.com/user-745793386/talent10x-should-the-monday-after-the-super-bowl-be-a-holiday

Gimbel said companies that attempt to “squash the fun and energy” coming from a big sporting event are missing out on a great opportunity to engage their staff.

Looking at the current state of Chicago’s core sports teams right now, Gimbel might be planning a little something for his firm in February.

“We’re not ruling out anything for the Super Bowl,” Gimbel said. “If the [Chicago] Bears make it, who knows what we’ll do?”

October 12, 2018June 29, 2023

A New Crop of Benefits: Fresh Produce Grown at the Office

Most employers want their employees to be healthier, and healthy eating is one way to achieve that. One company is taking this idea to the extreme and offering organizations the chance to grow fresh produce on site with their own farm.

Boston-based agriculture technology company Freight Farms builds IoT-connected, vertical farms — literally growing plants on the walls of shipping containers — using hydroponics, a growing method that utilizes 90 percent less water than traditional growing and a mineral nutrient solution in a water solvent without soil. The company sells its farms — called the Leafy Green Machines — to companies that would then be the ones responsible for staffing and upkeeping the farms.

In September, Freight Farms announced a new service called Grown that provides the labor to manage the farm, said Caroline Katsiroubas, director of marketing and one of the founding members of Freight Farms. Previously, some organizations didn’t have the staffing or facilities maintenance capacity to maintain a farm. With the Grown service, organizations pay an average pay $5,000 a month, for custom crop scheduling, maintenance, supply replenishment, 24/7 farm monitoring and all farming operations, such as seeding, transplanting and harvesting.

“We hope to see this huge barrier to entry for these organizations get resolved,” she said.

Indoor farming has come a long way in the past two years and become increasingly mainstream, she said. It’s becoming less of a challenge to convince people that it’s possible to grow food in an indoor shipping container.

The Leafy Green Machine operates by growing in a shipping container, 40′ x 8′ x 9.5′ per unit, in a climate-controlled environment, Katsiroubas said. Air temperature, carbon dioxide levels and watering are managed. LED lights stimulate day and night for the plants to echo a more natural environment. A central brain in the farm knows when to increase or decrease and turn off or on these environmental factors.

Freight Farms focuses on leafy greens such lettuce, heartier greens including kale and herbs because this produce uses the space more efficiently and growers get more food per square foot.

This isn’t unlike what many other indoor farms do, according to the “State of Indoor Farming, 2017” by Agrilyst, a management and analytics platform for indoor farms. Agrilyst tracks and analyzes farm data from 150 farmers who participated in this survey. This research found that 57 percent of growers focused on leafy greens, while only 16 percent grew tomatoes and 10 percent flowers.

Dassault Systemès SolidWorks Corp., a company that develops 3D editing software and is based in Waltham, Massachusetts, is using the vertical farm as an employee benefit, Katsiroubas said. “It helps them skip the produce aisle essentially when they’re going grocery shopping,” she added.

By growing its own fresh produce on campus Dassault Systemès was able to set up a community supported agriculture, or CSA, program with weekly deliveries that employees could sign up for, said Jim Wilkinson, former vice president of user experience architecture at Dassault Systemès and leader of the Boston Campus Employee Activities Committee. He recently retired after 22 years at the company.

A CSA is an arrangement in which consumers can subscribe to receive a certain amount of fresh produce from a farmer on a regular basis. For example, by signing up, an employee could receive a couple heads of lettuce, a couple heads of kale and a box of herbs every week.

About 50 employees, or 6 percent of the campus population, signed up for the deliveries, which cost the same or less than other local CSA programs, he said. Also, the produce doesn’t need to be washed, lasts longer in the refrigerator and does not need to be consumed right away.

“Plus, we were able to give input on what type of produce we would prefer which was a big bonus,” Wilkinson said. “Often CSAs deliver types of produce that you don’t even know what to do with.”

Dassault Systemès, whose software Freight Farms uses to design their farms, was interested in having their own farm for a few years, but, before the CSA program was introduced, that was not possible, he said. Now, the software company is participating in the first pilot for Grown.

Another way employers can distribute this company-grown produce is by offering a salad bar to employees, Katsiroubas said.

Freight Farms is starting out with its new service in the New England area with plans to grow in other geographies next year, according to Katsiroubas. Although she sees this as a benefit for interested employees, what often attracts leadership is how the hyper-local Leafy Green Machine contributes to corporate social responsibility, she added.

How to Build High-performing Teams and Gain the Ultimate Competitive Advantage

Trust is key to a functioning workplace and to high-performing teams. It also, however, is on a steep decline. The 2018 Edelman Trust Barometer found a 37-point drop in trust across all institutions in the United States.

But the study also had some surprising findings about trust in the workplace. Some 72 percent of respondents said they trusted their employer to do what is right.

That’s good news for leaders as they seek to nurture trust and build effective teams. Trust is frequently seen as a “soft” pursuit that can be furthered with social events, mission statements and the like. In truth, trust flows from a hard approach that prioritizes a clear overarching strategy and a commitment to transparency.

Trust is invaluable in effective teamwork. Workplace expert and writer Patrick Lencioni said it best. “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”

Business leaders can build the teams they need to get that competitive advantage by investing in high-performing teams and giving them the tools they need. They must support them on their journey through deliberate practices grounded in art and science. These three steps are proven approaches to building effective teams.

Craft a Shared Vision That Inspires

The best teams are grounded in a sense of purpose and are inspired by a shared vision. Helping teams discover their unique purpose jump-starts teams into the honeymoon phase, reminding them why they commit their nights and days to each other and their clients.

Crafting a shared vision helps teams begin imagining new possibilities and renews a sense of focus and passion. Watching a team go all in is priceless; it’s every leader’s dream.

Engage the Right Mix of People

Once a team is fully engaged in their “why,” they need to discover how to work together to bring their vision to life. The right mix for a team is a diverse group of committed and passionate people with a shared vision and deep investment in each other’s success. As individuals, they bring their own unique experiences, skills and perspectives. But the magic happens when they come together to solve the most complex problems.

The right mix is much more than a collection of individual superstars. In fact, a focus on individuals undermines team-building.

Practice the Behaviors That Lead to Success

Leaders can craft a beautiful shared vision and recruit the right mix but it’s how the team behaves together that matters most. Lencioni got it right in his bestselling book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.” What differentiates great teams from dysfunctional teams is their ability to practice five winning behaviors that drive collective success.

A leader’s ability to model these behaviors — and expect nothing less of the team — are essential to success.

The five winning behaviors are trust, conflict, commitment, accountability and a focus on results. Each of these plays out in team-building.

Trust is the confidence among team members that their peers’ intentions are good. When trust exists, team members have each other’s back and feel free to express their ideas, listen respectfully to the ideas of others and build a shared solution to a problem.

The second winning behavior is conflict. Great relationships require productive conflict to grow. Teams that have a foundation of trust appreciate that conflict is nothing less than the pursuit of the best possible answer.

Third, team members must be committed. Commitment is a function of two things: clarity and buy-in. Great teams make clear and timely decisions and move forward with complete buy-in, even from those who disagree with the decision. Not everyone needs to agree. They just need to know that their opinions have been considered.

Accountability is peer pressure at its most productive, inspiring people to deliver on their promises to one another. Accountability includes a willingness to challenge others on their performance or behaviors that hurt the team’s efforts.

Finally, there must be a focus on results. Teams must focus relentlessly on achieving clearly defined outcomes. Results-oriented teams collaborate seamlessly, make sacrifices for the good of the team and share in their failures and successes.

The trust necessary for team-building doesn’t come from trips to adventure parks, happy hours or “trust falls.” Instead, it is based on a clear overarching strategy from the team’s leader, coupled with the development of a shared vision, the right mix of people and winning behaviors. By maintaining a focus on achieving real results, leaders and their teams create positive solutions to hard problems. That reinforces the trust they feel in themselves, their team and their employer, creating a virtuous circle that leads to an unbeatable competitive advantage.

October 2, 2018June 29, 2023

‘I’m Going to Need Every Saturday Off; Is That Gonna Be a Problem?’

Darrell Patterson had worked in Walgreens’ 24/7 call center for six years without incident.

He claims Walgreens fired him for skipping an emergency training session held on a Saturday.

He’s a Seventh-day Adventist, and it’s against his religion to work on the Sabbath (from sundown Friday through sundown Saturday). Until his firing, they had worked cooperatively to schedule around this religious prohibitions, without incident.

Patterson’s religion and Walgreens’ scheduling came to a head in 2011, however, when Walgreens asked Patterson to cover an emergency Saturday training session. When he missed the training class, Walgreens fired him.

In Patterson v. Walgreens, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of Patterson’s religious discrimination lawsuit.

Title VII requires an employer to reasonably accommodate an employee whose sincerely held religious belief, practice, or observance conflicts with a work requirement, unless doing so would pose an undue hardship. An accommodation poses an undue hardship if it causes more than de minimis cost on the operation of the employer’s business.

In Patterson, the 11th Circuit held in Walgreens’ favor because it had tried to reasonably accommodate Patterson’s religion.

Walgreens shifted the regular training schedule to Sunday through Thursday for Patterson. That minimized conflicts. For unusual training sessions that were conducted on his Sabbath, Walgreens allowed Patterson to find other employees to cover his shifts, and he did so on several occasions. Patterson conceded that his supervisor had never refused one of his requests to swap a Sabbath shift with a willing employee.

Regarding the Saturday, August 20, 2011, emergency training session that Patterson was assigned to conduct, besides his supervisor, he called only one employee, who advised him that she could not cover for him because of her childcare obligations. Although Patterson thought that several other employees could have covered the training session for him, he did not attempt to contact any of them.

Walgreens met its obligations under Title VII by allowing Patterson to arrange a schedule swap with other employees when they were willing to do so.

What is the lesson for employers? A documented history of accommodating an employee (whether it’s religion or disability) will go a long way to defeating that employee’s discrimination claim if you are compelled to deny an accommodation request.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.

October 1, 2018June 29, 2023

5 Steps to Take When an Employee Sues Your Company

I’ve written a lot over the years about best practices to prevent lawsuits by employees.

The fact remains, though, that no matter how good a company’s HR practices are, and no matter how proactive a company is with its legal compliance, a certain percentage of terminations and other employment decisions will turn into lawsuits. It’s the simple the cost of doing business.

The following are five things a company should be actively thinking about when it receives the inevitable lawsuit:

1. Relevant documents should be identified and preserved. Employment lawsuits are not as document intensive and some other disputes in which businesses are involved. Nonetheless, the documents are crucial. They provide a roadmap to the justification for the termination or other employment action, and the reasonableness of the employer’s actions. Key documents (personnel files, handbooks, other policies, investigative reports, emails, and other communications) should be gathered and set aside. Also, a litigation hold should be put in place to ensure that no relevant documents are accidentally destroyed.
2. Under Ohio’s discrimination law, managers and supervisors can be personally liable for their own individual acts of discrimination. Often, they are sued in their individual capacity along with the company. Potential conflicts of interest among any individual defendants and the company must be evaluated very early in the case to ensure that conflicts of interest do no exist. If they do, one attorney cannot represent all defendants. If conflicts are not identified until well into the case, the lawyer may have to withdraw, which could irreparably damage the defense.
3. Fight the urge to take it personally. When an ex-employee claims discrimination, companies can lose sight of the fact that lawsuits are part of doing business. Employer often shift into attack mode because they are accused of being bigots. There is a huge difference between aggressively defending a case and attacking for the sake of attacking. The former is smart strategy; the latter often leads to greater costs by losing focus. It also risks taking action that could be viewed as retaliatoryand bring further claims. Extra care must be taken when the plaintiff is current employee, as opposed to an ex-employee.
4. If your company has Employment Practices Liability Insurance, timely file a claim with the insurer. If you have purchased a rider that permits you to select counsel, make sure you enforce that right. If you have not purchased that protection, consider having a candid conversation with the insurance company about the counsel they will choose for you.
5. Hire experienced employment counsel to defend the claim. Employment law is highly specialized. Retaining counsel that knows that ins and outs of this area of law is the best way to keep costs down as much as possible, while at the same time doing everything possible to aggressively defend the company.

What key steps have I missed? Is there anything your company does when it’s sued that you think others should also be doing? Share you thoughts in the comments below.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.

September 17, 2018June 29, 2023

Sexual Harassment Allegations Unjustifiably Ruin People’s Lives Only if They Are False

On Sunday, The Washington Post published Christine Blasey Ford’s decades old allegations of sexual abuse she claims to have suffered at the hand of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court nominee. You can read the full letter here.

Let’s be clear. All we have right now are allegations of misconduct, buried for decades. But now, those allegations are public. They are serious. And they must be taken seriously.

And they also have the potential to ruin Judge Kavanaugh’s life.

If he did what Ms. Ford accuses him of doing, I have zero sympathy for how this impacts his Supreme Court nomination. We are not only giving someone a job for life, we are giving someone a job for life who will rule on issues that go to the core of women’s rights: abortion, equal pay, and discrimination, to name a few.

How he treats, or has treated, women is germane to this process. As is whether he sexually assaulted someone while in high school.

A week ago, I would have told you that Judge Kavanaugh deserved to be confirmed. I do not agree with many of his positions on issues, but that should not disqualify anyone from Supreme Court service. If it did, no one would ever get confirmed. Donald Trump won the White House, and to his victory goes the spoils of judicial nominations. The remedy is not the imposition of an ideological litmus test to court appointees, but to vote.

Now, however, I am not sure. If these allegations are true, he should not serve, period. If they are unfounded, then he should serve, period.

The issue of whether Kavanaugh did it, or didn’t do it, is critical. More importantly, as President Trump suggested when discussing the issue of allegations of harassment, Judge Kavanaugh deserves due process. Luckily for him, there exists a body, already convened, equipped to provide it — the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Anything other than a full and fair hearing of these allegations will cause Judge Kavanaugh to be judged in the court of public opinion. Isn’t that what we are trying to avoid “for someone falsely accused?”

Anyone accused of harassment deserves to have the allegations vetted. As an employee, your employer should fully and fairly investigate, and, if it determines the allegations to be false, it should fire the accuser, period.

To do anything other than to pause this confirmation to determine just how much fire lurks behind Ms. Ford’s smoke, to provide Judge Kavanaugh the due process to which he is entitled, is reckless and dangerous. The American people, the rights of whom Judge Kavanaugh will vote for decades and impact for decades more, deserve this much.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.

September 12, 2018June 29, 2023

The 15th Nominee for the Worst Employer of 2018 Is … the Threatening Torturer

Was this a car dealership or the set of Hostel 4?

Jason Cox worked as a car salesman for Marietta Motors. According to Cox’s lawsuit, for the entirety of his 10 months of employment, the company’s owner, Travis Westfall, engaged in a continuous and unrelenting campaign of verbal and physical abuse and harassment.

Cox claims that Westfall:

Repeatedly demeaned him based on his large size, with names such as “Tiny,” “Fat Ass,” and “handicapped.”
On numerous occasions, pointed at Cox the red laser-sight of the handgun he kept at work.
Placed the handgun to Cox’s chest while telling him not to make any sudden moves.
More than once held knives or other sharp objects to Cox’s throat while demanding that he not make any sudden movements.
Told Cox that he could “slit [his] throat and sleep just fine at night.”
Struck Cox with a soda bottle on his surgically repaired leg.
Punched Cox repeatedly.
Lit fires near Cox.
Duck taped Cox’s phone to his hand and head while he was talking.
Repeatedly shocked Cox with a taser, to the point that his co-workers attempted to hide the weapon from Westfall.

Cox also claims that Westfall captured the abuse on video and shared it on social media.

Ultimately, claims Cox, he quit and fled the workplace, but not before he claims to have suffered severe and permanent mental and physical injuries.

If even a portion of this stuff happened, not only will it qualify Marietta Motors and Travis Westfall for a well-deserved nomination for the Worst Employer of 2018, but it will also result in a very large and warranted payday for Jason Cox.

Jon Hyman is a partner at Meyers, Roman, Friedberg & Lewis in Cleveland. Comment below or email editors@workforce.com. Follow Hyman’s blog at Workforce.com/PracticalEmployer.