Some career experts (and I use this title lightly) tell people to work for free as a way to get their foot in the door. This is a stupid suggestion so I was heartened to read a story on FastCompany.com encouraging workers not to work for free.

“If you’re busy doing free work because it’s a good way to hide from the difficult job of getting paid for your work,” Seth Godin exhorts, “stop.”

Godin is a branding guru, and people tend to listen to what he advises. That a great thing because adult internships for for-profit corporations is a dumb way to climb the ladder of success, as Godin points out.

It also can be illegal, which the article fails to mention. (more…)

During the State of the Union address last night, President Obama made some key statements that could impact many employees, and future employees, across the country.

* “I propose a Fix-It-First program to put people to work soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the 70,000 deficient bridges.”

* “Let’s declare no one who works full time should have to live in poverty and raise minimum wage to $9 an hour.”

* “I ask this Congress to declare women should earn a living equal to their efforts & pass Paycheck Fairness Act.”

* “Create H.S. classes focused on science, technology engineering and math, the skills today’s employer are looking for.”

* “Now is not the time to gut investments in science and innovation, we need to make those investments.”

* “I will direct my cabinet to come up with executive actions to reduce pollution and prepare for climate change” and speed to development of alternative energy such as wind and solar.

Jobs created as investments are made in the nation’s ailing infrastructure. Wages finally boosted so that workers who work full time aren’t among the ranks of the poor. Equal pay for women. Training for employees and kids in STEM careers so the United States can compete globally for jobs. And employment opportunities spurred by investments in alternative energies.

These proposals seem to all make sense, no? The question is, how much of these ambitious proposals will become a reality?

Most of the career advice out there cautions employees from saying anything negative about their managers or company out in cyber space. But there are times trashing your boss on Facebook or Twitter is OK.

For the past few years I’ve been writing about how the government was pushing back on employers who fire employees for saying bad things about them online. A story I wrote for TheAtlantic.com in 2010 looked at how the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), an independent federal agency that defends employee-organizing rights, was beginning to step up and take complaints from workers who felt they were fired unjustly.

The NLRB felt companies were beginning to violate a long-existing provision of the National Labor Relations Act that provides protections to employees who get together and complain about a host of workplace issues - everything from conditions to benefits. Just because the discussions occur in cyber space doesn’t make a bit of difference, Jonathan Kreisberg, the NLRB’s Regional Director in Connecticut, told me then.

Well, it looks like the agency has solidified it’s standing on this topic. (more…)

The Career Diva posts that got the most people reading in 2012 were all about the stupid things employers do.

Here are the top ten posts of the year:

Turns out many of you are upset about performance reviews, and you have good reason to be. The experts say such reviews are arbitrary and utterly useless.

And quite a few of you agreed some human resource departments can be clueless, especially when it comes to employee benefits such as family and medical leave.

Another workplace problem that gets under everyone’s skin is the rise in employers trying to get under your skin and find out how healthy, or unhealthy workers are.

A disturbing trend during 2012 was the growing number of employees holding multiple jobs.

It turns out if you’re a tough white woman or tough black man you can’t get a break.

What got job seekers angry this past year was the endless amount of interviews hiring managers think they need to decide on a candidate.

And women are still facing the perpetual problem of not supporting each other. Who cares how much Kelly Clarkson weighs? Quite a few of us, it turns out.

Employers are still asking job candidates how old they are, and they’re not always breaking the law when they do it.

My standing desk is still my back’s savoir, and a popular topic for many of you.

And finally, the Diva post that got the most readers reading was actually about a story I didn’t write. Lesson for 2013, don’t believe everything you read, especially work-at-home success stories.

Happy New Years everyone!! Looking forward to hearing from you all in the new year with your job/career questions. (careerdiva@verizon.net)

At a time when the unemployment rate for returning veterans has been showing signs of hope, a growing number of companies are breaking the laws that protect the employment of returning veterans.

Vets, including National Guard and Reserve soldiers, have faced numerous deployments and calls to duty during the years of war over the past decade, and many have returned to find they no longer had jobs they expected to return to. Some contend they have faced discrimination on their return, or retaliation for their military service.

Such actions are illegal under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, or USERRA, which is supposed to help protect veterans when they return to the workforce.

But some employers either don’t care about the law or are ignorant of it.

“The number of new USERRA cases handled by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Veteran Employment and Training Service (DOL VETS) and the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) rose 10 percent from 1,438 to 1,576,” according to Department of Labor data provided by employment law firm Tully Rinckey, one of the top firms in the country focused on veteran workplace rights. (more…)

Hurricane Sandy shuttered or disrupted operations for thousands of businesses on the East Coast, and that’s already hit workers’ wallets.

Some companies continued to pay workers, while others decided it didn’t make economic sense, and still other employers are pondering what to do. The Wall Street Journal calls this the “Disaster Dilemma” in an article published today.

This from the piece:

Companies largely excused worker absences immediately after the storm, which left millions without power and tens of thousands temporarily homeless. But as businesses around the region return to normal, managers are grappling with how much, and how long, to pay employees who cannot make it in to work.

Clearly, companies are going to make decisions based on their own financial situations, and also based on their ethics, but employees should know what the law says in these cases before just accepting what bosses decide. Not everyone is going to follow the law, and some employers are just ignorant about it.

Here’s a good overview on your rights from Patrick Bannon, C.J. Eaton, Loren Gesinsky and Barry Miller, all employment lawyers for Seyfarth Shaw: (more…)

I know a lot of you don’t take Twitter seriously, but a recent rogue tweet by a once-prominent CEO proves otherwise.

Jack Welch, the former head of General Electric who went on to make a career for himself as a writer for a host of business publications, decided to take his political fervor for Mitt Romney and trash the staff at the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS.

You see, he was apparently upset that the BLS’ unemployment data for September showed a drop in the jobless rate and wrote a tweet that questioned the integrity of the BLS numbers.

Here’s his tweet:

“Unbelievable jobs numbers…these Chicago guys will do anything…can’t debate so change numbers.”

I was particularly perturbed over Welch’s tweet because I know many of the folks at the BLS and they’ve always seemed to have the utmost integrity no matter which administration they served under. But clearly, Welch has a right to say what ever the heck he wants.

But, and here’s the big but, it can end up hurting your career, as it appears to have in Welch’s case. (more…)

No matter how many stories and blog posts I write about not mixing politics and work, people still keep asking me whether it’s a good idea or not.

Yes, this is America, land of free speech. But folks when you go to work today you’re not protected if you spout off about the Republican convention, or any other political topic.

The First Amendment says Congress can’t pass laws curtailing speech, but taking political sides or appearing to take sides can be hazardous to your employment, even if you’re not doing it during work time. There is no free speech in the private-sector workplace.

To make matters worse many of you are not only engaging in political conversations with co-workers face to face, many of you are also increasingly using social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, or blogs, e-mail and instant messaging, to get your opinions out this political season.

This from ‏@VCUPav on Twitter today:

“Gov Christie is so fat he doesn’t follow polls, he changes them by altering planetary alignment.”

While this one is funny, if I read another how-fat-is-New-Jersey-Governor-Chris-Christie joke I’m going to scream.

And you definitely don’t want to make your co workers or managers scream.

Here’s a scenario a lawyer from Proskauer, one of the top labor law firms, sent me yesterday:

(A man returns to his office from a lunchtime rally decked out in campaign buttons supporting a candidate or political party. On the way to his desk, he enters into a heated discussion with another employee with opposing views. His boss asks the man to remove the buttons and refrain from engaging in politically-charged debates at work. He refuses, asserting his right to “free speech.” Who’s in the right?) (more…)

When I covered the auto industry for a local newspaper many years ago, some of the autoworkers took to calling me Lois Lane. I’d show up in my fitted suits — notepad in hand — at the plants, at local bars they hung out at, and in parking lots where some of them drank beer to deal with the horrific summer heat in non air-conditioned facilities.

Even though I knew some of workers were mocking me a bit, I secretly was proud of the title. All I ever wanted to be was a reporter since I was probably around 11 or 12. Lois Lane happened to be my idol early on when I’d watch reruns of the original Superman series.

So, what’s weirder than a career writer writing about her new career?

Yes, I’m leaving the world of full-time journalism and heading into the nonprofit world. But I won’t be leaving the workplace and labor world my friends.

As of mid August, I’ll be joining a New York-based think tank called Families & Work Institute, or FWI.

I’ll still be blogging about workplace issues here on CareerDiva and writing occasionally for NBCNews.com, but my full-time gig will be getting the message out about the great research and advocacy FWI does.

This moment is bittersweet. I leave behind a profession I’ve loved for more than 20 years, and I leave behind a great crew of journalists at MSNBC.com, now NBCNews.com.

Change can be scary. I’ll admit that. But change is what makes our lives exciting and enriching. (more…)

There’s some good news for job seekers who have been faced with financial issues, or have had brushes with the law.

Fewer employers are snooping into your criminal or credit background today.

Criminal background checks have become increasingly popular partly because technology has made it easier to dig up dirt and partly because hiring managers want any tools to help them weed through the many applicants, given the tight labor market.

But such reviews had a tendency to disproportionately hurt African-Americans and Latinos, according to many labor advocates. Not to mention the fact that lots of other job seekers from all groups who’ve faced unemployment, or underemployment, have faced money woes and may have had their credit histories impacted as a result.

Steps by the federal government and states to crack down on the practice have gotten everyone looking more closely at the process.

“Some of the decline in the use of credit checks may be related to measures put in place by state governments and municipalities, as well as increased attention to the issue,” said Mike Aitken, vice president of government affairs at the Society of Human Resource Management.

The organization just released its figures on such background checks and found:

More than one-half (53 percent) of respondents to a SHRM survey said they don’t use credit background checks in hiring. That’s an increase from 2010, when 40 percent of organizations reported not using credit checks, and from 2004, when 39 percent did not.

“Employers – through their HR professionals – are continually evaluating practices and programs. And this is no different,” Aitken said.

“We think employers are looking more closely at these practices,” he continued. “They want to ensure that any screening or evaluation tool used during the hiring process is related to the duties of specific positions and consistent with federal law prohibiting job discrimination.”

Amen to that.