Category: Commentary & Opinion

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Results — Would you boycott a business based on the candidate it supports?

employee activism

The results are. Thank you to the 244 of you took the time to answer my question: Would you boycott a business based on the candidate whom it (or, more accurately, its ownership) supports for President in this election?

The results:

Yes = 58.6%
No = 41.4%

The comments, however, are more interesting than the results themselves. Here’s a sample.

  • I would boycott a business that supports Trump because he is a racist and anyone (owner of a company included) who supports him signals, to me, that they are fine with racism.
  • I did it with Chik-fil-a because of their stance on LGBTQ so I would definitely do it if I knew they were supporting a racist / conspiracy theory promoting candidate.
  • This election is more than just politics- the candidates have different morals. I want to make sure where I work and who I work with have similar morals to myself.

vs.

  • I prefer to base my business selections on the quality of the products/services offered.
  • It’s time to calm the rhetoric. And that means if someone has a product or service I want, and they didn’t vote the way I liked, I should still buy the product/service. Why? Because that’s the only way to keep America working.

vs.

  • You can’t preach tolerance and then boycott people who don’t agree with you.
  • We need to be tolerant of others’ views- just basic civility. I’m a democrat and Biden supporter and I still feel this way.

vs.

  • This is the start of a slippery slope. First it is the candidate they support, then it is whether they like homosexuals, then it is whether they support abortions then it is whether they like Jews or Muslims or whatever, then it is whether they like whites, blacks or green people. This is how Hitler started.
  • I am tired of boycotts and cancel culture. This has gotten out of control.
  • That’s fascism.
Such a fascinating conversation that I’d never thought about approaching before this year’s election, which is as much (or more) about values than it is about candidates, issues, or ideologies.
I’ll leave you with this thought. No matter the candidate you support or lean towards (or against), please just vote!
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Coronavirus Update: Please stop telling me that we all just need to get on with living our lives

COVID-19, coronavirus, public health crisis

Earlier this week, I posed what I thought was a simple question on the private Facebook page of my community’s homeowners’ association: given the current rise of COVID-19 cases, should we, as a community, rethink our trick-or-treating plans. It was intended to start a generative discussion about whether we can host public trick-or-treating safely, but it quickly devolved into insults and name-calling.

The general theme of my pro-Halloween opponents was some combination of—if you don’t feel safe stay home in your basement; and we need to live our lives. People felt comfortable expressing this opinion even after others had commented about family members COVID-19 had killed.

People need to stop correlating COVID-19 safety measures with a restriction on their ability to “live their lives.” We are in the midst of a pandemic stemming from a highly contagious airborne virus. The pandemic is not getting better. In fact, it’s getting worse as we are just at the beginning of the second wave of this deadly virus. More than 220,000 Americans have died, and countless more have suffered the loss of a loved one, or are continuing to suffer the lasting and lingering effects of a virus that we still don’t fully understand. The numbers are getting worse (health experts use the ominous word deterioration), and we are in for a long and difficult winter as we battle COVID-19’s second wave.
You living your life is stopping me from living mine.
My family has been very cautious with this virus. For the first two months of “living with Covid” we stayed in our home. We had groceries delivered. We only met with people from outside of our home on Zoom. We did not even order takeout. Seven months later my wife and I are both still working from home full-time.
As we entered summer, however, we started to slowly branch out. I started going to the grocery store in person. We ordered takeout from our favorite restaurants. (I scratched some off the list after seeing employees not wearing masks.) Every now and then we started grabbing a glass of wine outside at our favorite local wine bar, have enjoyed a few nights of live outdoor music at the wine bar, have entertained family and friends outside on our deck in small groups, and, in August sent our children back to school. For us, this is living our lives.
Others views of living their lives is quite different. They have large parties, visit restaurants and bars, and attend huge social gatherings. Moreover, as COVID fatigue sets in after seven months of limitation and restriction, people are getting lazier with maintaining distancing and wearing masks.
In short, a lot of people aren’t doing the things we all need to do to battle back this deadly virus. And because of it, I’m being forced back deeper into my comfort zone, my bubble.
Maybe I’m resentful. People out “living their lives” may not get sick at all, and I’m being hyper-cautious and I or my family still might.
Or maybe I don’t understand the appearance of selfishness and callousness—that you care more about your own life than that of your fellow human beings. That it’s more important to you to host that large party at your home or fill your kid’s sack with bits of candy, than to ensure that you don’t spread a deadly virus around our community.
The reality is that we can still beat back this virus. Science is in agreement with the simple steps we need to take.
  1. Wear masks.
  2. Maintain physical distance.
  3. Wash your hands.
  4. Stay home if you’re sick.

These measures are not complicated. But I also understand that simple does not equate to easy. It’s going to be a long fall and winter, especially in climates like Ohio’s, where we will be forced indoors for several months. But if we continue to ignore basic health and safety measures, COVID-19 will continue to thrive, more people will get sick and die, and people “living their lives” will continue to either jeopardize mine or force me into full-time hermit mode.

So today I am imploring everyone to think about others in addition to thinking about yourselves. When this virus I over (and one day it will be over), I will not have any regrets over how I lived my life. Will you be able to say the same?
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New CDC guidance will result in A LOT more employee absences

software, compliance

Yesterday, the CDC made a key update to its COVID-19 guidance. It made a significant change to the definition of “close contact.”

No longer does one qualify as a “close contact” by being within 6 feet of someone for 15 continuous minutes or more.
The CDC now defines “close contact” as:
Someone who was within 6 feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period (individual exposures added together over a 24-hour period) starting from 2 days before illness onset (or, for asymptomatic patients, 2 days prior to test specimen collection) until the time the patient is isolated.”

Factors to consider in determining whether one is a “close contact” include:

  • Proximity (closer distance likely increases exposure risk);
  • The duration of exposure (longer exposure time likely increases exposure risk);
  • Whether the infected individual has symptoms (the period around onset of symptoms is associated with the highest levels of viral shedding);
  • If the infected person was likely to generate respiratory aerosols (e.g., was coughing, singing, shouting); and
  • Other environmental factors (crowding, adequacy of ventilation, whether exposure was indoors or outdoors).
Most notably, under separate CDC guidance, this determination is made regardless of whether anyone was wearing a mask or other facial covering.
This change matters a lot. COVID-19 quarantine rules depend on whether one has been in close contact with someone who tested positive. The liberalization of this definition (which appears to have been based on anecdotal evidence of at least one infection) will result in more people meeting the definition of “close contact” and therefore having to quarantine for 14 days after an exposure to someone who tested positive.
This doesn’t just matter to exposures in your workplace. It also matters to employees’ activities out side of work, and to their children who are exposed at school. If the child has to quarantine for 14 days, guess who might need to be home with their quarantining child?
Make no mistake, this will create an attendance mess for employers, especially as COVID-19 numbers continue to briskly rise. Now is the time to double-down on the enforcement of physical distancing rules and measures at work. Six feet must mean six feet at all times.
  • Floors should be marked so that employees understand what six feet looks like.
  • Shifts should be staggered to allow for greater separation of employees, if needed.
  • Start- and end-times should be shifted to avoid bunching at time clocks.
  • Lunch and break rooms should be set up to avoid crowding and allow for distancing.
  • Bathrooms and elevators should have strict (and low) occupancy limits.

You can’t control with whom an employee or a family member comes in close contact outside of work, but you certainly can enforce measures at work to limit the possibility of close contact occurring there. Otherwise, you risk one positive COVID-19 case wiping out your business for two straight weeks.

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Would you boycott a business based on the candidate it supports?

politics, election, vote

Over the weekend I got into an interesting discussion on Twitter with a couple of my favorite musicians, Brendon Benson and Caitlin Rose. Here’s the question:

I’d like to expand this topic further and ask, Would you boycott a business based on the candidate whom it (or more accurately, its owner) supports for president in this election?

I’ve created this anonymous one-question survey (with space to comment) to gather opinions.

Thanks for taking the time to answer. I’ll share the results in a future post.
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PLEASE don’t tell your employees which candidate to vote for

employee activism

This post at the Evil HR Lady Facebook group caught my attention yesterday:

Florida company’s president warns employees their jobs could be in danger if Trump loses election

Here are the detail:

Some employees at a Florida manufacturing company feel they were threatened with being laid off if they did not support President Donald Trump.…

Their paystubs included a letter from [the employer] warning them that their jobs could be in danger.

“If Trump and the Republicans win the election, DMC will hopefully be able to continue operating, more or less as it has been operating lately,” the letter read. “However, if Biden and the Democrats win, DMC could be forced to begin permanent layoffs in late 2020 and/or early 2021.”

While it’s not illegal for employers to talk to their employees about the upcoming election and suggest how to vote, there are laws regulating this type of conduct if it goes too far.

The federal government criminalizesintimidation, threats, or coercion for the purpose of interfering with one’s right to vote one’s choice in a federal election. A few states (Michigan, for example) expressly prohibit employers from discharging or otherwise coercing employees to influence their votes in political elections. Ohio is not one of those states.

Legal or illegal, however, you need to ask yourself whether holding meetings to discuss political issues, threatening employees’ jobs, mandating their attendance at political events, or otherwise telling them how they should vote is a valid business practice. How you answer the question of whether you think it’s okay to try to shape or influence your employees’ votes helps define the kind of employer you are. Voting is an intensely personal choice. I don’t think it’s my business how my family or friends cast their votes. I certainly don’t think it’s an employer’s business how its employees cast their votes. Voting booths have privacy curtains for a reason. Exercise some discretion by not invading the privacy of your workers regarding their choice of candidates or political parties.

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The 10th nominee for the “Worst Employer of 2020” is … the Callous Car Dealer

COVID-19, coronavirus, public health crisis

I continue to shake my head at the callousness of employers during this pandemic. Consider this example from The Oregonian, which earns its spot as the 10th nominee for the Worst Employer of 2020.

A finance manager at a used car dealership in Portland was fired by his boss during a staff meeting for questioning the company’s alleged cover-up of a coronavirus cluster, a lawsuit claims.

McCrary contends his boss directed employees to conceal a COVID-19 outbreak to maintain business profits and customer visits to the showroom….

At least two workers tested positive and a general manager exhibited symptoms but refused to be tested, the lawsuit says. Two “significant others” of employees also tested positive, the suit says.…

His suit claims that Lapin didn’t require social distancing or take other safety measures at work in light of the coronavirus pandemic and had fired another sales representative who was worried in spring about coming into work.

Worst Employer of 2020 The lawsuit further alleges that the owner fired McCrary in an “alcohol and drug-induced rage” during an all-staff meeting after McCrary had raised health and safety concerns following the outbreak, screaming, “Everyone, everyone Shawn is fired – get the (expletive) out of my company!”
McCrary’s lawsuit also quotes this text message the owner sent after the staff became aware of the positive cases: “Keep this down please. Don’t share this information with anyone since we do not want to scare away business.”
A worthy nominee, indeed.
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What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate

employee communications

An employee suffers an injury that prevents her from operating a motor vehicle. With no means of transportation to travel to and from her workplace, the employee calls off work, believing that her absences were excused. They weren’t, and the employer fires her for excessive absences.

She sues, claiming disability discrimination, in part because of the company’s failure to accommodate her inability to drive.

n Hazelett v. Wal-Mart Stores, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the employee’s ADA claim should have survived summary judgment.

[I]t appears that Wal-Mart failed to participate in the interactive process required under the ADA.… Wal-Mart failed to provide Hazelett two requested accommodations: that she be given leave until July 17, 2015, in her FMLA Medical Certification when she would be released to drive, and two, an assignment to an alternative job to which she could commute.

What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate. Once an employer becomes aware of the need for a reasonable accommodation, the ADA obligates it to engage in an interactive process with the employee to identify and implement appropriate reasonable accommodations. That process requires communication and good-faith exploration of possible accommodations. An employer cannot dismiss, without discussion, accommodations. An employer cannot even rely on state workers’ comp laws or standards. The interactive process is mandatory, period.

Communication between an employer and a disabled employee is the key to avoiding problems under the ADA. Do not commit the cardinal ADA sin of failing to communicate. Talk with your employees. You’d be surprised how many problems you can head off with a simple conversation.

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Coronavirus Update: Reporting an employee who tests positive

COVID-19, workforce management WFM 2.0, ethics

When an employee tests positive, an employer has certain reporting obligations. These obligations fall into two categories—reporting to OSHA and reporting to your state or local health agency under state law.

OSHA

While OSHA has remained largely silent on mandates for businesses related to COVID-19, it has published specific guidance on when an employer must record and report COVID cases at work.

Under OSHA’s recordkeeping requirements, COVID-19 is a recordable illness, and employers must record cases of COVID-19 in their OSHA logs, if:

  1. The case is a confirmed case of COVID-19;
  2. The case is work-related; and
  3. The case involves death, days away from work, restricted work or transfer to another job, medical treatment beyond first aid, loss of consciousness, or a significant injury or illness diagnosed by a physician or other licensed health-care professional.
You should assume numbers 1 and 3 are met when an employee reports a positive test. Criteria number 2—work-relatedness—will almost always be the tripping point for recording vs. non-recording.
According to OSHA, an employer must make a “reasonable determination” of work-relatedness in determining whether to record an employee’s positive test. In making this determination, OSHA relies on three factors:
  • The reasonableness of the employer’s investigation. OSHA does not expect employers to undertake extensive medical inquiries. Instead, OSHA usually considers it sufficient for an employer (1) to ask the employee how s/he believes s/he contracted the COVID-19 illness; (2) while respecting employee privacy, discuss with the employee work and out-of-work activities that may have led to the COVID-19 illness; and (3) review the employee’s work environment for potential COVID-19 exposure.
  • The evidence available to the employer at the time it made its work-relatedness determination.
  • The evidence that a COVID-19 illness was contracted at work. OSHA states that the following information is relevant to this determination—
    • COVID-19 illnesses are likely work-related when several cases develop among workers who work closely together and there is no alternative explanation.
    • An employee’s COVID-19 illness is likely work-related if it is contracted shortly after lengthy, close exposure to a particular customer or coworker who has a confirmed case of COVID-19 and there is no alternative explanation.
    • An employee’s COVID-19 illness is likely work-related if his job duties include having frequent, close exposure to the general public in a locality with ongoing community transmission and there is no alternative explanation.
    • An employee’s COVID-19 illness is likely not work-related if she is the only worker to contract COVID-19 in her vicinity and her job duties do not include having frequent contact with the general public, regardless of the rate of community spread.
    • An employee’s COVID-19 illness is likely not work-related if he, outside the workplace, closely and frequently associates with someone (e.g., a family member, significant other, or close friend) who (1) has COVID-19; (2) is not a coworker, and (3) exposes the employee during the period in which the individual is likely infectious.
    • CSHOs should give due weight to any evidence of causation, pertaining to the employee illness, at issue provided by medical providers, public health authorities, or the employee herself.

Per OSHA, “If, after the reasonable and good faith inquiry described above, the employer cannot determine whether it is more likely than not that exposure in the workplace played a causal role with respect to a particular case of COVID-19, the employer does not need to record that COVID-19 illness.”

OSHA’s reporting rules also apply to confirmed workplace cases of COVID-19. That is, for confirmed work-related cases of COVID-19—
  • an employer must report to OSHA in-patient hospitalizations within 24 hours of knowing both that an employee has been in-patient hospitalized and that the reason for the hospitalization was a work-related case of COVID-19; and
  • an employer must report employee fatalities the occur within 30 days of the workplace incident (in this case, the exposure to COVID-19) and within 8 hours of the actual fatality.
Violations of these recording or reporting requirements are subject to OSHA’s traditional enforcement and penalties.
State Law
 
States have their own COVID-19 reporting requirements. For example, Ohio mandates that businesses “contact their local health district about suspected cases or exposures” of COVID-19. This reporting is critical so that the local health department can undertake the contact tracing necessary to identify close contacts and limit pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic spread.
Employers should check with their legal counsel on their state-specific reporting requirements.
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If your employees are scared to come to work you are doing something very, very wrong

Super Bowl Monday, football, NFL

According to Deadspin, NFL players are terrified of COVID but are afraid to speak up for fear of angering the NFL.

“I looked at my son. I looked at my family, and I just didn’t think it was worth it,” Jaguars player Lerentee McCray, a seven-year veteran, told me this summer after opting out. “I could catch it and bring it home to them. Or I can get it and even if it doesn’t kill me, it could destroy my career long-term. I feel really weird not playing football right now, but can’t. I can’t risk doing something so dangerous and maybe hurting the people I love.”

In the end, most players decided the money was worth the risk. So, they play.

Yet there’s been a definite shift in that attitude over the past few months and even weeks, several told me in various interviews, as the virus spreads through locker rooms. Most requested anonymity for fear of angering NFL owners and the league office.

Players add that they feel that the safety measures the league and their union promised pre-season were meaningless.

One of the things players tell me that’s changed their thinking from the summer is the ballistic pace of the infections. One moment the virus isn’t there, the next it’s calling plays in the huddle. As a virus spreads through a locker room there’s a sense of helplessness. Players now think of football during the pandemic era not as a calculated risk, but Russian roulette.

All of the outbreaks have left a player base more scared than ever before. That’s the word I’m hearing the most: scared.

This is awful. Yes, they make a lot of money to play a game, and yes, they all had the ability to opt out before the season started (as 67 players chose to do). But they also should have an expectation that their employer is doing everything within reason to keep them safe and the ability to air their grievances if they perceive that their employer is failing in that mission. The fact that players believe that the NFL is failing on both counts is galling.

Employers, you have one primary obligation to your employees during this pandemic — keep them safe. If your employees are terrified to come to work, you are failing, period. It’s time to look inward. Are you doing your part?

  • Are you mandating masks?
  • Do you require a minimum of six feet of physical distance at all times?
  • Are you promoting hand washing and other good personal hygiene habits?
  • Are you regularly cleaning and sanitizing work and common areas?
  • Have you eliminated gatherings of employees?
  • Are you mandating self-screening for COVID-19 symptoms and sending home anyone with symptoms until cleared by a doctor?
  • Are you enforcing the CDC’s isolation and quarantine rules?
  • Do you have an open door through which employees can walk, without retaliation or fear of retaliation, if they feel you are not meeting these obligations or their coworkers aren’t following the rules?

Unless you can answer yes to each of these questions, it’s time to take a long, hard look at your pandemic protocols and decide what you should be doing differently. Your employees, their families and friends, and the general public are counting on you.

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Coronavirus update 10-12-2020: Schadenfreude

COVID-19, coronavirus, public health crisis

If you and I are connected on LinkedIn or Twitter, you may have noticed that my headline describes me as a (the?) “Master of Workplace Schadenfreude.”

I’m often asked, “Jon, what the heck does that mean?” Today, I have the answer.

Schadenfreude is a German word that most commonly translates to “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.” Yet, after listening to a recent episode of Vox Media’s Today, Explained podcast, I’ve decided that definition is way too cold and narrow.

 

The episode discusses the moral conundrum some felt with upon learning of President Trump’s recent COVID-19 diagnosis. In doing so, it takes a 2:45 deep-dive into the moral philosophy behind Schadenfreude. Being a college philosophy major who, 26 years ago, dabbled with the idea of continuing those studies in grad school instead of going to law school, the discussion made me giddy.

Vox reporter Sigal Samuel discussed four different possible meanings of Schadenfreude as seen through the eyes of four different philosophers—

    1. Arthur Schopenhauer, who defined Schadenfreude as a moral failing or diabolical cruelty, calling it “an infallible sign of a thoroughly bad heart and profound moral worthlessness.”
    2. Charles Baudelaire, who thought of Schadenfreude as a sense of superiority, taking delight in the fact that you’re smarter and better than the person whose suffering you’re enjoying. He used the example of watching someone slip on the ice: “I don’t fall, I don’t; I walk straight, I do; my footstep is steady and assured, mine is.” It’s not cruelty for the sake of being cruel, but instead, an unconscious boosting of your self-esteem, albeit through the failings of others.
    3. Michel de Montaigne, who likened Schadenfreude to one’s own vulnerability. You’re not celebrating someone else’s calamity, you’re celebrating the fact that by comparison, you’re safe.
    4. René Descartes, who believed that Schadenfreude is an act of justice, arising when something bad happens to someone who you feel has earned it. It’s joy in seeing someone deserving get their comeuppance, elation in the fairness of the situation, and delight in karma getting its due.
If I had to choose where I fall on this moral spectrum, it’s somewhere between numbers 3 and 4. I take joy in seeing someone getting what they deserve because of who they are or what they’ve done, combined with the celebration that I’m not in their shoes. I’m definitely not diabolically rejoicing over someone else’s failings or failures.
There you have it. Wonder no more about why I call myself the Master of Workplace Schadenfreude.
Tomorrow, back to your regularly scheduled COVID-19 workplace updates.