State of Minnesota’s Post

Dear Congressman or Senator  ____________,     I write to urge you to support bipartisan legislation that would correct the federal classification of 911 call-takers and dispatchers. The federal government currently classifies these occupations, collectively known as Public Safety Telecommunicators, as administrative/clerical in nature, which is inaccurate and a disservice to their inherently protective work. Congress can fix this by passing the 911 SAVES Act (H.R. 6319).   Public Safety Telecommunicators perform lifesaving work every day. They coach callers through CPR, deal with suicidal persons, analyze background noises and the caller’s tone of voice to assess scene safety for arriving responders, and have a critical role for a variety of other emergencies.    Unfortunately, the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC), a vast catalog of occupations maintained by the Office of Management and Budget, categorizes Public Safety Telecommunicators as “Office and Administrative Support Occupations,” which includes secretaries, taxicab dispatchers, and office clerks. The 911 SAVES Act would reclassify Public Safety Telecommunicators as “Protective Service Occupations,” which includes fire fighters as well as a broad range of occupations that includes fish and game wardens, school bus monitors, parking enforcement workers, and even casino gambling monitors.    The SOC is designed and maintained for federal agencies to use solely for statistical purposes, and changing the SOC would not change salaries or benefits. The SOC is supposed to organize occupations based on the nature of the work performed. Correcting the classification would make the SOC a more accurate and, therefore, more useful statistical resource. In 2014-2017, OMB revised classifications for the 2018 SOC. During this revision, OMB rejected thousands of comments and Congressional support urging a change to Public Safety Telecommunicators’ classification status. OMB based its decision on inaccurate information about Public Safety Telecommunicators, and ignored the SOC criteria and how other federal data programs classify Public Safety Telecommunicators. OMB intends to review the SOC every ten years, but there is no set date for the next revision.   The 911 SAVES Act has strong bipartisan support (H.R. 6319). We respectfully request that you consider supporting this zero-cost legislative fix to correct the inaccurate classification and recognize our nation’s 100,000 Public Safety Telecommunicators for the work they do every day to protect and save the lives of the public and first responders.

Can I be fired for sharing state staffing ratios with coworkers at work? #HelpNeeded #StateLaws #WorkplaceDilemma Hey there, friends! So, here’s the scoop – I’m an LPN at a skilled nursing and rehab facility and let me tell you, our staffing situation is less than ideal. The residents and staff are really feeling the strain, and it’s not pretty. I recently discovered that there’s a staffing ratio law listed on a state website, but my facility is not following it. State surveyors even paid us a visit and we got fined for our staffing issues, yet nothing has changed. It’s a mess, and everyone is feeling the effects. Someone printed copies of the law and shared it around while I was off work, and now I’m hearing whispers that the bosses are on the hunt to find out who did it. I know it’s public information, but I can’t shake this feeling of unease that I might get called into the boss’s office. So, I’m left wondering – can my employer actually fire me for sharing this vital information with my coworkers? I mean, it’s not like I’m spilling state secrets here, right? What do you think, folks? Have you been in a similar situation or have some insight to share? Hit me up with your thoughts! Let’s dive into this together and figure out what’s what. Answers: https://mymetr...

We love assisting our clients with hiring both employee and contractors but it is important to understand the difference between the two and follow government and IRS rules to avoid potential fines. Here is a helpful article that explains the difference. https://lnkd.in/eT9YEyuu

#California recently updated two pamphlets that must be provided to new hires explaining what workers’ compensation is, how to file a claim and how to navigate medical care. Jackson Lewis attorneys Janelle Sahouria and Adam James Turton discuss. 

A good quick read on protecting federal jobs.

If your employer tells you that you live in an "at will" state therefore they don’t need to provide you a reason for termination after you worked for them for 6.5 years and have had 26 consecutive outstanding quarterly performance reviews, I’ve got a few things you can respond with. 1️⃣ First let them know that every state in the union except Montana is an employment at will state. They are not telling you something that everyone does not already know. 2️⃣ Second, if you are in a protected class of any sort, employment at will does not apply, so pound sand. 3️⃣ Third, if you are not in any protected class, you can respond with, you are absolutely right. You can just randomly terminate me, discard me like trash, after 6.5 years of loyal and outstanding performance that has been well documented and can’t be disputed. And you have a right to share publicly how little this employer thinks of employees and to warn others of the treatment. So be it. We can all treat each other with respect or dignity or not, but this one-way street needs to end. If an employer acts in a reputationally damage way then let's speak about them in a reputationally damaging way. They should not be allowed to continue doing it. We must make it more costly to do wrong than allow them to financially gain from it. The truth is the truth, they can't hide from it any more. It is time to hold employers accountable for their actions.

Tis the season! The season for in-house legal compensation survey results. First of all, I appreciate all the organizations and companies who put together these surveys and share their results. It really is valuable to those of us in-house and legal ops people. But can I ask two questions: 1. If you do a survey and publish the results, do you have a methodology that you use to attempt to standardize and normalize results? In other words, do you have a process to adjust for the possibility that you are getting a disproportionate response rate from those with unusually high compensation? If so, is there a place where we can review your process? 2. If you are a respondent or potential respondent to these surveys, have you ever decided not to respond because you think that your compensation is likely to be outside the norm? I'm specifically interested in whether anyone will admit to not responding because they thought that their compensation is too low. But it would be useful to hear about the opposite situation as well. As potentially helpful as the survey results are, there is inevitably going to be push-back from those who say "It's a voluntary survey, so you can't trust the results. Only people with bigger comp packages are willing to respond." I'd like to have some ammunition to respond to that criticism. #InHouseLegalInsights #CompensationClarity #LegalOpsTransparency #CompensationSurvey2024

In particular I appreciated this portion of Dan's post: "If an employer acts in a reputationally damage way then let's speak about them in a reputationally damaging way. They should not be allowed to continue doing it. We must make it more costly to do wrong than allow them to financially gain from it. The truth is the truth, they can't hide from it any more. It is time to hold employers accountable for their actions." All too often we leave quietly and no one truly knows about the toxic environments. Time to share the truth about those at the helm.