Here is how Companies are winning (or at least containing the damage) against their employees.
A few years ago a slew of Federal and State laws were passed (in the early 1990's) which were supposed to add layers of protection to employees rights and keep them from getting treated badly or illegally by their employers. A "No polygraph law", The family medical and leave act, a minimum wage law with a lot of caveats attached, and social laws like the ability to file EEOC claims, unemployment claims, medical claims, privacy laws , Whistleblower retribution claims acts and etc were enacted.
Most employers have now figured out how to go about their business and do pretty much what they want, without regard to the law ( or its intent anyway). They are paying lawyers to violate the spirit of the laws , while staying just inside the farthest edge of the letter of the laws that they possibly can.
Here's what I am talking about and how they do it.
First, the most common strategy is to get your agreement about how certain matters are handled legally if you have been or feel as if you have been wronged. Most commonly , they get you to sign and date a legal document as part of Pre-Employment routines, which details how many legal and civil matters are settled. They call it arbitration, which is a fancy way of saying it won't ever go to court. (At least they hope never, in the final outcome).
Arbitration really means that another lawyer who is a trained and certified arbiter will hear your case, informally, usually in a law office, and the case will be judged by the arbiter. It will probably never be heard as a part of any legal matter in court and will not contribute to case law. The reason that this is a winning strategy is you always have the option of representing yourself at arbitration, and companies know that they can outspend you 100 to 1 on attorney fees. They then keep you tied in knots doing a paperwork dance in arbitration and they will still spend 80 percent less legal dollars than they would have if it went to a regular court.
They then couple this strategy with one I call the "Pay as you go plan", where you get buried under in paper work , depositions, legalese, meetings and other "house keeping" matters, which takes time away from where you earn your money (your work) , and either forces you to become a very good lay-lawyer or spend an inordinate sum hiring a civil law attorney. They play the percentages and know that almost nobody who earns less than $150,000 can afford to or ever will hire an attorney to represent them. This is all civil law and civil attorneys do not take cases like this on a contingency basis ( their fees come from your winnings) without money up front. They also know that the vast majority of people do not have the ten-thousand dollars ready at hand that it will take to get a case off the ground. If you are able to hire a lawyer, they also know that most people cannot afford the monthly bill either. The reason this strategy works is they can afford all of these things and laugh at you while they bury you into the ground under a mountain of paperwork.
Most people give up and go away long before they ever get to this point. Almost every type of claim against a company with arbitration is handled this way. they will tell you it is because the costs are lower than litigation , but really it is because the chance of winning is about 10 times greater for them.
Sad , but very true.
Next, and this happened before the laws were passed, is they had lobbyists working hard to protect them and you didn't. Lobbyists are very helpful at getting the caveats inserted into legislation that release the company from any obligation if certain things happen.
Let's see what a steak dinner can do?
Say you get hurt at work by a forklift driver. You were just standing there, and a forklift runs over your foot. You did nothing wrong, you had nothing to do with the accident, you were not the cause. You go to the hospital, get your injuries treated, and are off work for say 8 weeks. You think your employer should cover you under say, workmen's compensation laws. Will you be covered? The answer is it depends.
First, as part of most recent workmen's compensation laws enacted since 1985, if you have any drugs, alcohol, or narcotics of any illegal kind in your system, you are probably not covered. That is not even the worst part. The worst part is, and believe me this is part of the pro-win the claim pursued by companies, the bill will be sent to you for treatment and you will probably be fired. How do they know? The legislation says that the hospital , doctor or clinic has to test you for drugs (etc) if you come in under a workmen's compensation claim. How did they get a test? They drew blood for "tests", sometimes never telling you they are testing for drugs (etc) except in some form you may have signed without reading that was 5 pages long and required 3 signatures and 4 initials, consenting to the tests.
The way the laws are written in some states, they never have to tell you at all, you are supposed to know it in advance. So if you had too much too drink the night before, went to work before it all wore off and had a detectable level of alcohol (any level will do), then you are under the influence and you are at fault. Sorry about your luck.
You can test at .01 BAC and this is enough to deny you the benefit. Great news huh?
Secondly, they can pay you for the time you missed under a certain amount of hours or gross pay, and give you a job that could be no mort than sharpening pencils. They call this limited duty, return to work benefits. Great news you get to return to work ! Wrong, Screw up one time and they will fire you for incompetence, be late one minute twice and they can release you for "habitual tardiness", and then just stall you on the hospital bill until the care giver stops bothering the company with the appeals for payment and then just comes after you instead. You have to prove you don't owe it and your former company does.
The other way they have figured out how to get out of it is to make you jump through all kinds of hoops , by scheduling you for visits at their doctors who must concur with the original hospital findings. If you miss one appointment , no matter how inconvenient, no matter why you missed it, Poof. Your claim is denied and they pay nothing.
There is more to this story and more to examine. I'll get to it next time.
Next : Why Human Resources departments should really be called "Litigation Services".
Thankx- bigmike
posted from "The Rant from bigmike" at
Take a second and check out my new business at
http://answrtek.com and let me know what you think.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are welcome (Keep it clean and I will publish it.) I fully support the 1st and 2nd amendments. Nasty comments and SPAM are deleted.