Information on Legislation and Public Policy Impacting Employees Employers
This bill was originally proposed by Assembly Member Fiona Ma of San Francisco. It recently passed through the California State Assembly and is on its way to the Senate where it is also expected to pass. It is expected that it will be vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger, but there is some chance it may get passed in some form as a bargaining chip to get the state budget approved.
The City and County of San Francisco has enacted a similar city wide ordinance and Assembly member Ma has decided that if it’s good enough for San Francisco, it’s good enough for the rest of the State. Many small employers already provide paid sick leave, and we laud employers who provide this benefit. Mandating this benefit however may have severe consequences on small business, small employers, especially in their early years when money to fund a business tends to be more scarce.
This bill would require small employers to provide at least 5 days paid sick leave per year and larger employers, a minimum of 9 paid sick days per year. If an employee is making $20/hr and gets 9 days paid sick leave per year, this is equivalent to $1440/year. If the employer has 10 employees, then that is about 15K/ year. If the employer has to replace the employee due to sick leave, then that is an additional 15K. Further the employer is still responsible to pay the employer taxes in addition to the above wages. Many small businesses operate on a very thin profit margin. This legislation will reduce the profit or create a loss for many of those businesses.
No other state in the USA mandates paid sick leave. California is notorious for being a very expensive state in which to operate a business, large or small. There is no question that the economy is slower today. If this bill is passes, it will exacerbate conditions for employers by increasing costs. This bill will ultimately result in greater costs to the employer, which the employer will have to recoup through higher costs, layoffs, cutbacks, smaller or no raises, etc. Most employees would like to see none of these consequences happen to them.
Call to Action
As we say in the employment business, the recession is when your neighbor is laid off. The depression is when you are. To prevent an employer depression resulting in layoffs, and keep California competitive, write to your state legislators, both your Assembly and Senate representatives and let them know you oppose this bill. If you are not sure who they are, then go here to find out. To find your local reps, enter your zip code or address. You can send your letters to them and the author of the bill.
I am providing a sample letter you can send them. You can send it by email or fax to make it easy…
jd
Blogroll
Date
Name of Legislator
Subject: Opposition to AB 2716
Dear ______________:
I am opposed to AB 2716, a new Bill requesting protected paid sick leave plan for employees. This Bill would unreasonably expand employer costs and liability.
Most California employers participate in the California State Disability Insurance Program (SDI) which is paid for through payroll deductions and provides temporary disability benefits for employees who are disabled by a non-work related illness or injury. The employer is not required by law to offer paid sick leave to employees in addition to mandated SDI benefits. In fact, payment of sick leave may reduce the SDI benefits to which an individual is entitled.
Many California employers provide paid sick leave and or paid vacation time even though current law does not require it. Under current law, unlike vacation days, sick leave does not accrue or vest. Therefore, any unused sick leave may be forfeited at the end of a designated period of time. AB 2716 proposes to require unused paid sick time to carry over from year to year.
The ever increasing burden of costly mandates on employers can cumulatively result in lower wages, reducing available health insurance, limiting training programs and in some cases, job loss or reduced work hours. In an already troubled California economy, California should be seeking ways to stimulate job growth and avoid costly mandates on employers.
Thank you for considering my position on this bill.
Sincerely,
Your Name
We explored in the last posting how to use Google to find your candidate’s contact information. If you are trying to track down a company email for a candidate, the best way is to enter @companydomain.com in a search engine like Google. You should see other emails that exist on the internet for this company and more importantly, you should see the email format that this particular company uses. More than likely, it will be either firstname.lastname or first initial+lastname or firstname+last initial.
Be warned though, sometimes employees of a company get to choose the username they want. This could be a set of initials, a first name, or a nickname. If you feel that you are sure about the address, you can always send your email and see if you get a response. If you don’t, then another email to the next one. If the email doesn’t exist, then you will get a bounce back from their server. If their mail server accepts SMTP authorization, then you can use one of the email verification tools we talked about in the previous article.
Some potential candidates can’t be found anywhere on the web except postings in technical newsgroups. The newsgroups or Usenet is what the internet used to be before we entered the wonderful world of hypertext documents back in 1991. Engineers and research scientists still use newsgroups to post a topic and start a discussion. Everyone who belongs to these groups has to sign to use & respond to them. Google now owns the web-based version of these newsgroups. Luckily for us, they can be easily searched. The trick is to search either the name of the individual you are looking for, or use the author: command.
Click on the first image for the slideshow:
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- Mark
We explored in the last posting how to use a People Search engine to find your candidate. Some candidates you find out, are just not on any search engine and barely have any web presence at all. This usually happens more with technical candidates who are so busy with their work that they do not have time to network and be as involved with others online as we are.
You can use Linkedin, which is a good resource provided you have Inmails available to you or the prospective candidate is within your extended network. There is always possibility that the candidate refuses your Inmail, so the next best thing is to search for their email on Google. Start off by searching their full name in Google, but pay attention to pages that could lead you to a personal site or blog:
Click on the first image for the slideshow:
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Mail Tester
Validating Email
Join us next time when we talk about searching for corporate emails and emails that are found in Google Groups.
- Mark
There are a number of ways of finding information on specific people on the web including using services like Pipl Search as well as regular search engines. Depending on the service or search engine the user can enter variables like middle initial, company, technical areas of competence, geographical location where they last lived or worked etc. The more related variables you enter, the more likely you will get to the correct name first.
Pipl searches not only for contact information of a person, but it also combines the web search functionality of Zoominfo. This “deep dive” search includes sites like mySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Linkedin, Hoover’s, SEC, and Amazon.
Click on the first image for the slideshow:
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Join us next time for Part 2 - How to find a candidate when they can’t be found through people search engines.
- Mark
With gas prices reaching all time record people are thinking twice of their commute to work. In some cases people are moving closer to work or finding a job closer to home. According to Fortune 500 companies by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) technology companies are at top of the list. EPA states that 94 percent of Intel employees and 91 percent of Microsoft employees are eligible for commuter benefits meeting the agency’s standard. Each year commuting to and from work cost the nation $63.1 billion in wasted time and fuel. WOW!
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|
Rank
|
Company
|
Percentage of Eligible Employees
|
| 1 | Intel |
94% |
| 2 | Microsoft |
91% |
| 3 | (tie) Google Inc. |
86% |
| 3 | (tie) Oracle |
86% |
| 5 | QUALCOMM |
76% |
| 6 | Yahoo! Inc. |
72% |
| 7 | Cisco Systems |
70% |
| 8 | Sun Microsystems |
68% |
| 9 | Texas Instruments |
65% |
| 10 | Applied Materials, Inc. |
63% |
| 11 | Safeco Insurance |
60% |
| 12 | Reliant Energy |
59% |
| 13 | Wyeth |
58% |
| 14 | Apple |
57% |
| 15 | IBM |
53% |
| 16 | Advanced Micro Devices |
50% |
| 17 | (tie) EMC Corporation |
49% |
| 17 | (tie) El Paso Corporation |
49% |
| 17 | (tie) Nike, Inc. |
49% |
| 20 | Schering-Plough |
47% |
- Ismael