If you’ve paid attention to the news following Steve Jobs announcement that he was retiring from Apple, you would have thought he was some sort of divine being. But is everyone overlooking his less than saintly deeds?

The Wall Street Journal wrote following Jobs departure news:

Every generation produces a few individuals whose will to restructure the world in their own image is so powerful that they seem to distort reality itself. They change the world, not always for the better—and that in the U.S. they often choose to pursue entrepreneurship and industry rather than politics is one of the uncelebrated blessings of American capitalism.

Mr. Jobs—who emerged from an uncertain childhood brilliant, charismatic and charged with an ambition that would make most mortals blush—is one of those figures, a fact recognized even before he reached adulthood.

PC Magazine asked:

What event could top an earthquake and a hurricane? Steve Jobs stepping down as Apple’s chief executive, of course.

And one publication’s headline about Jobs departure actually was:

Steve Jobs Retirement Causes Earthquakes, Rain and Hurricanes

Yes the guy revolutionized the technology we use today, but the narrative about his stewardship of Apple is missing some pretty bad stuff when it comes to labor pratices.

Apple’s operations in China, where most of the company’s products are now made, have been described as sweatshops. These facilities are so bad that last year at least 17 employees there killed themselves. But for some reason, Apple, and Jobs in particular, get a pass. If Walmart, Nike, Mattel or any other company had such skeletons in its operations’ closet, would the media and consumers be this kind? (more…)

Social media is a great thing and employers know it. That’s why so many companies are using services such as Twitter and Facebook to get the message out about their products and services; and also getting their own employees to tweet and post comments in an effort to promote their wares.

A reader recently wrote me that he uploaded something personal on his company Facebook page by mistake. He ended up deleting it immediately, but wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t caught his error.

What would have happened? That’s the big question. Employees are sort of in the dark on this because so many employers don’t even have policies regarding social media use. A new study of multi-national employers found that (more…)

There’s a trial going on in Delaware’s Court of Chancery that involves a well-known company going after an ex employee, and it should be a wake up call for all you workers out there who will some day go on to greener employment pastures.

The makers of Gore-Tex, W.L. Gore, are claiming an ex employee, Darrell Long, violated agreements he had signed with the company specifying he would not compete with his former employer or disclose any company secrets. Long is now a product line leader with General Electric and Gore is crying foul against Long and GE.

This from the Wilmington News Journal:

… in the weeks leading up to his
resignation, Long downloaded more than
9,000 documents from his work computer,
many of them confidential filtration
business plans, financial statements and
customer lists, according to public court
filings.

Gore’s case includes wide-ranging — and often unrelated — accusations against Long and officials at GE Energy, including another former Gore employee, Bob Muscat. Gore claims that Long, Muscat and others “plotted” to use confidential documents from Gore to capture the company’s filtration business, court filings show.

Long and GE are disputing Gore’s accusations but this type of dispute is likely to play out more and more in the months and years ahead as employees decide to jump ship. Employers have gotten more stringent in recent years about having worker sign noncompete agreements, and many employees have felt pressure to sign just about anything during the tough economy because they wanted jobs.

Among the flood of forms you get when you’re first hired, or paperwork a boss asks you to fill out as part of a new company policy, a noncompete clause or agreement may be lurking. If you sign it, you could be shooting yourself in the career foot.

Such legal documents can preclude you from going to work for a competitor or even keep you from starting a business in a similar industry; and they are more popular than ever. “Employers are still holding the cards,” said Barbara Poole, CEO of Employaid, an online resource for employees and HR executives. “This is an era of distrust - employees of corporations and vice versa.” (more…)

There’s an odd war of words going on in the world of organized labor, and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal appear to be on two different sides.

The two newspapers had very different accounts of a worker movement at Walmart that has recently surfaced and is trying to get better wages and benefits from the retail giant. The group is called Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart.

Yesterday a story in the Times called OUR:

a new, nonunion group of Wal-Mart employees that intends to press for better pay, benefits and most of all, more respect at work.

But today, a story in the Journal on OUR called the group:

a new, union-financed organization and the latest salvo in the long and so far fruitless efforts by U.S. labor unions to organize the 1.4 million U.S. workers at the world’s largest retail chain.

Even the headlines of the two stories were diametrically opposed:

Times: Wal-Mart Workers Try the Nonunion Route

Journal: Wal-Mart Is Facing Latest Salvo From Union

No, the reporters of these stories haven’t lost their minds. Times reporter Steven Greenhouse, and Journal reporters Miguel Bustillo and Kris Maher are all very good at what they do. But the problem here points to how loaded the word “union” is in our country. (more…)

It’s 9 a.m., do you know how many hours of work you’ll put in today?

There’s one basic axiom in the for-profit workplace — employees get paid for the work they do. But for some reason companies just can’t seem to get this simple concept.

Walmart got bitch slapped yet again on Friday for its employment practices, this time for not paying workers who worked off the clock, which is against the law; and not paying employees for 15 minutes rest breaks, which was a provision in the retailer’s own handbook.

And it’s just not Walmart trying to take a few shekels out of workers’ paychecks. Best Buy is also facing allegations that it misclassified managers who were actually doing hourly work but not getting paid overtime when they did it. The company has come under fire for its pay practices in the past, more than once.

States and the federal government have been cracking down on such infractions recently, but workers need to step up and demand to be paid what they’re owed. To that end, the Department of Labor has introduced an app to help you keep track of your own hours. That’s how bad they think it’s getting folks. (more…)

Can greed stop greed?

Anyone who’s suffered through the economic implosion may want to pay attention to a decision the Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to make today. The SEC, securities-market federal watchdog agency, is deciding whether employees should get big payouts to expose corruption at the companies that employ them.

And guess who’s opposing the move? You guessed it, employers.

The Dodd-Frank financial reform law created more incentives, including a whistleblower bounty, for employees to step forward, something that’s very difficult for them to do because they can lose their jobs as a result, and many have. The legislation actually calls for financial incentives of up to 30 percent of funds recovered for information employees give regulators that leads to prosecution.

But Corporate America isn’t happy. (more…)

On May 6, a group of worker advocates in Hong Kong released a report on factories in China where Apple’s iPhones and iPods, and Hewlett Packard’s laptops are made, and the findings were pretty damning. Alas, if anyone noticed the report, three workers may be alive today.

The owner of the facilities Foxconn had come under fire last year for the 14-plus suicides committed by employees of the company. The problem of workers flinging themselves off of stairwells at the plant because of the horrible working conditions was so bad the company installed nets to keep employees from jumping off upper levels.

Foxconn had promised to make things better but a group called Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior in Hong Kong decided to keep an eye on whether things would really change, hence the report. In additional to finding a continuation of tough working conditions, including forced overtime and crummy wages, the researchers discovered an ominous problem. (more…)

Conventional wisdom has been that you err on the side of caution when it comes to putting anything out there in cyber space, especially if it relates in anyway to your employer. The thinking has been, “you never know when the boss is watching.”

That idea is slowly changing as the government continues to scrutinize employers who fire workers for exercising their free speech rights on social networking sites, especially when it comes to dogging your employer. The way officials at the National Labor Relations Board see it, Facebook and Twitter are no different than traditional water-cooler chatter.

Basically, if workers get together to discuss working conditions at their employer that’s considered protected speech under the nation’s labor laws. So, doing the same on the Internet is no different, the federal agency argues. (more…)

It’s bad enough that states across the country are cutting the duration of unemployment benefits at a time when the jobless rate is still hovering at 9 percent and 13.7 million people are out of work. Now employers want to use your off-duty behavior to justify denial of your unemployment check.

Florida passed a law, HB 7005, that expands the reasons you can be denied benefits to include what you do on your own time.

Here’s the section of the law: Revising the term “misconduct” to include conduct outside of the workplace and additional lapses in behavior.

“This is a Trojan horse nightmare,” said Lewis Maltby, president of the National Worktights Institute. “Willful misconduct is already applied too broadly. This law will make the problem even worse.”

Indeed, it will serve to widen the reasons-you-can’t-get-unemployment net and create major privacy issues. (more…)

Maybe you’re pondering ordering a bouquet of flowers for your beloved mother, or you’re planning on bringing her a big box of truffles this Sunday. I say, forget it, especially if you’re a boss of women.

The best thing you can do to honor old mom is don’t demote, fire or otherwise treat the pregnant women you employ in a negative fashion just because they’re pregnant. Would you have wanted someone to do that to your mom when you were in her belly?

Did you know pregnancy discrimination is on the rise folks? Well it is, and it’s showing no signs of improvement. It’s unclear what’s driving it but no matter what is, it’s a sad commentary on how we view motherhood in the country. (more…)