EEOC: Walmart Failed to Accommodate Disabled Worker's Toilet Trips

The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC), charged with enforcing federal protections against workplace disability discrimination, has sued WalMart in North Carolina for allegedly declining to provide reasonable accommodation and improperly terminating a Crohn's disease-afflicted employee. The EEOC asserts the worker was deprived requested absences for medical appointments and hospitalization as well as transfer to a position closer to a bathroom.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), applicable to employers with 15 or more on payroll, protects disabled employees - otherwise qualified to perform the essential functions of their jobs -- from discrimination. Absent undue hardship, employers must seek and provide reasonable accommodations to allow such workers to perform those essential functions.

The government's suit claims Walmart violated the ADA by firing the worker for incurring more unexcused absences than allowed under company policy, despite her providing doctor's notes. The EEOC seeks monetary recovery for the former employee as well as a court order to bar any future discrimination.

The EEOC's regional attorney commented, "The Americans with Disabilities Act was created to protect employees like this deli associate. Here you have a long-term employee who--at the onset of a debilitating health condition--needs some flexibility from her employer while she seeks medical treatment and works toward managing the condition."

Presuming no dispute on the number and nature of employee's absences, Walmart would need to justify the termination by establishing the worker's non-attendance created a significant adverse impact on its operations.

Take Away: On an employee's claim of difficulty to perform his/her duties due to a physical or emotional impediment, management must diligently strive to find a reasonable accommodation to assist the worker to perform up to company standards. The EEOC offers a series of company actions to meet that obligation. However, if such alternative measures would impose a sufficient adverse impact on the conduct of business (so-called "undue hardship"), the company would be justified in declining accommodation and in terminating the individual. For example, a trucking company need not hire blind drivers to be supported by assistants to loudly warn of impending collisions.

For further information, please contact Tim Bowles, Cindy Bamforth or Helena Kobrin.

See also:

• Relief for Online Businesses; California Court: Disabled Cannot Sue For Unintentional Access Discrimination (August 23, 2022)
• Workplace Discrimination Prevention: California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, A History (March 26, 2021)
• Accommodation Nation; Don't Turn a Deaf Ear to Employee Disabilities (August 23, 2019)

Tim Bowles
April 14, 2023

Random Government Investigations of Targeted Industries

The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the federal Department of Labor has published a 2022 Southern California Garment Worker Survey after random investigations of 50 area contractors. The results were abysmal:

• More than 50% paid workers off the books;
• 80% violated the federal Fair Labor Standards Act;
• 64% did not have accurate time and pay records;
• Below minimum wage pay rates went as low as $1.58/hour.

The WHD also found that 32% of the sewing contractors continued to pay by piece rate in violation of 2016 California law. See, Piece Work Compensation Is a Wreck Waiting to Happen; The Perils of New Labor Code Section 226.2 for Trucking, Auto Repair and Other Industries (December 4, 2015).

These federal audits netted $892,000 in back wages and liquidated damages.

While worker complaints against a specified company trigger many such federal or state inquiries, these 2022 WHD audits were random, targeting an industry notorious for its employment law abuses.

Take-Away: Whatever the industry, no employer should presume itself outside the government's scrutiny over its workplace legal compliance. Regular management review of its pay and related practices to ensure conformity with current standards is the best insurance against potentially crushing state or federal audit findings.

For further information, please contact Tim Bowles, Cindy Bamforth or Helena Kobrin.

See also:

• Cautionary Tale Episode 64: Dept. of Labor Half-Million Assessment Against Four California Care Homes: Feds Target Caregiving Industries (March 3, 2023)

• For Whom the Bell Tolls...Knock, Knock: When It's Your Turn For a Government Payroll Audit (April 5, 2019)

• Cautionary Tales Episode 17: Labor Enforcement Task Force Targeting "Underground Economy" (September 26, 2018)

Helena Kobrin
April 12, 2023

Deadline is May 10, 2023

As previously reported, effective January 1, 2023, Senate Bill (SB) 1162 requires California employers of 100 or more employees and/or 100 or more workers hired through labor contractors (i.e., staffing or temp agencies) to report annual pay and hours-worked data by job category, sex, race, and ethnicity to the Civil Rights Department (CRD) by the second Wednesday of every May (moved from the prior annual reporting date of March).

The pay data reporting is intended to self-assess and self-correct pay disparities along gender, racial, and ethnic lines. The reports also allow CRD to enforce more efficiently equal pay or Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) anti-discrimination laws.

As of 2023, the mandatory pay data reporting program:

• Applies to private employers with 100 or more full-time or part-time payroll employees nationwide and/or 100 or more workers hired through labor contractors (i.e., staffing agencies) who have at least one California employee. For example, an employer with 50 full-time payroll employees inside California and 50 part-time employees outside of California during the reporting year must file;
• Requires reporting on those employees who either work in California or who are located outside California and are assigned to a California establishment;
• Requires compiling and reporting detailed data elements, such as job categories, race/ethnicity, sex, and mean and median hourly rates;
• Requires online reporting exclusively via the CRD's Pay Data Reporting Portal;
• Eliminates the option to submit a federal EEO-1 report to CRD in satisfaction of state pay data reporting requirement; and
• Authorizes CRD to penalize employers that fail to timely file their pay data reports and labor contractors that fail to provide the necessary data to their client employers.

CRD has published extensive FAQs and other guidance to assist employers with the new detailed filing procedure.
For further information, please contact Tim Bowles, Cindy Bamforth or Helena Kobrin.
See also:

• Age Discrimination: Employee's Suspicion Not Enough - Older Workers Needs More Than Her Belief of Unequal Treatment (March 10, 2023)
• Disorder Insurance - Workplace Policy Handbook & Forms for 2023: Rule One: Rules (March 2, 2023)
• Tracking Down Discrimination - EEOC 2020 Report Retaliation, Disability Claims Predominate (April 19, 2021)

Cindy Bamforth
April 6, 2023

What is the real pay? Help offered; help accepted. Timeless.

Here is a final window into our most recent journey with the Applied Scholastics African Literacy Campaign (3/23 - 4/3/23). See also, Letter from Liberia (March 24, 2023); The Wrong Thing to Do: Nothing (March 25, 2023) and Kofi, Liberian Journey Continues (March 29, 2023).

***

Today, Thursday 3/29, we kick off our two-day Literacy and Leadership workshop with twenty Liberian community advocates, including leaders of the Federation of Liberian Youth (FLY).

Kofi will be taking part, coming back for day two tomorrow to watch some of the Tim-and-Jay show and to offer his twenty-cents to these 20-somethings.

Jay was only the first of now tens-of-thousands West African youth on my track. These relative newcomers to life as we think we know it are like no other, motivated because there are only two choices in the crushing gravity of this region: SURVIVE (!) or succumb. They choose the first.

Yes, the Monrovian FLY people have arrived, an "easy" motorbike journey around the African-strength traffic out there. Here also by swift word of mouth are four or five from Bong and Bomi counties, each a minimum three-hour drive provided one starts out well before dawn as they must have done.

Suddenly 2005 is 2023 and Jay is a generation removed from the youth category. He offers his experience - an overspreading shade from the glare of impossible conditions - so they might in turn shelter others far beyond his individual reach to do so. Hmm, I could say the same thing to him and his contemporaries, with 18 years of fruition and counting.

Jay takes a census. Only two college grads here, about half with some college and the rest none. Whether academic level is an asset or a liability is a question.

Jay dives right in, posing a leader's role - e.g., responsibility, courage, vision - by several quotes, including:

• "Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people." George Bernard Shaw

This one probably creates the most confusion and eventually the most traction. Are they committed to going along to get along or to confronting the manifest injustices that pass as business as usual?

Then, there's:

• "I am more afraid of an army of 100 sheep led by a lion, than an army of 100 lions led by a sheep." Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand

This too gives them pause but they see the point: leaders lead, the best not just creating followers' confidence in the leader's judgment but inspiring certainty and determination in themselves.

• "The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them." Albert Einstein

Another world-beater. It points to higher creativity, courage and of course to the key to highway: full responsibility across the boards.

Then, the segue:

• "It is not man's dreams that fail him. It is the lack of know-how required to bring those dreams into actuality." L. Ron Hubbard

Thus, we introduce the Study Tech fundamentals, purpose, attitude (more to know) and the three barriers.

Jay ends the day, as usual, with a challenge (and homework assignment): three or four pages on "Is Life Fair?"

Friday dawns. Now in full counsellor mode - spiffy suit and tie -- Kofi appears soon after we start. He's in his element, pressing these younger "Jays" to recognize their position is not "someday I'll be a leader," they are leaders now. Do, don't ponder.

With the vital importance of defined and of properly defined words established, Jay establishes through discussion the key terms of the Liberian Pledge of Allegiance:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of Liberia and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

So, what is a pledge?

Pledge: A serious promise or agreement

Marriage, religion are serious commitments, pledges.

What is allegiance?

Allegiance: loyalty to a person, country, group, etc.

Loyalty: Having or showing complete and constant support for someone or something

They have been mouthing these words throughout their school days. Did they understand what they were actually saying? Jay presses the "serious" and "complete and constant." It is starting to dawn; this is not your run-of-the-mill tread-water workshop.

What is a flag? Symbol of a nation or other unified group. A republic? Representative government. Indivisible? Cannot be divided. And ...

Liberty: A state or condition of people who are able to act and speak freely

Justice: The quality of fairness, evenhandedness

Jay is now dialed up to maximum impingement. These ideals - liberty and justice- are not static gifts from some outside supreme and benevolent authority, they are the operating states of this nation only assured by the solemn, unconditional commitment of its citizens. He leaves to each of those attending: either he or she is a player true and competent to the pledge or s/he's a pawn and spectator in the game. Yep, not your "normal" endure-it-and-forget-it symposium.

We review the responses.

First, is life fair? Samples:

Life is unfair. There are people who cannot eat one nutritious meal in a week or beyond. They cannot afford adequate clothing. They are sick often because of their state of deprivation. They are supposed to be our brothers and sisters in God but they are even helpless against biting insects.

Life is fair. We are not helpless; we have the power to change our conditions for the better. Don't like your body? Change it? Don't like your friends? Change them. Don't like our quality of life? Work to improve it.

Life is neither fair or unfair. Life is how you live it and what you make it. There are people born with disabilities who have thriving businesses. There are those without such supposed limitations sitting on the street begging for food or money.

Then, among the successes:

"With Study Tech under my belt, I now know the learning barriers with which I have collided. I've always just memorized stuff and later forgetten it, never having really understood the material.

"Yesterday at home, I reflected on Jay's emphasis on purpose and responsibility and decided to deactivate my Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. I can now focus on obtaining knowledge every day ...

"This training came at a very great time in my life. I am starting over, putting me first and learning new things every day. Thanks, Applied Scholastics for this opportunity. It will not go to waste." JTG, Federation of Liberian Youth

***

"I'm not fair to myself. I have made so many mistakes, going through the motions. This workshop has honestly put me back on track ... I have the courage to believe in myself. I pledge to change my mind set, to stop child's play, to believe in my own vision and to invest my time and energy into doing things that are worthwhile." TMJ, Bomi County

***

"Thank God for His tremendous guidance throughout this all-important workshop; and thanks to our thought-provoking trainers for their vigorous and inspiring message.
"We should all stop pretending to the public as if we know all or are well-equipped where we are not. To truly contribute to community betterment, we must put in the time and mold our intention to effective planning and action. It is my responsibility to competently carry out my part in this noble undertaking." NMF, Bong County

... and so, we work.

Tim Bowles
Paynesville, Liberia
March 30, 2023

Liberian Journey Continues

Thank you, readers, for the many encouraging responses to pieces on recent West African travel and our progress with the Applied Scholastics African Literacy Campaign (3/23 - 4/3/23). Letter from Liberia (March 24, 2023) and The Wrong Thing to Do: Nothing(March 25, 2023) More from those days? Sure, my pleasure. ...

***

Recovery always seems inevitable ... looking back. But not so much when trapped in the middle of surging somatic unpleasantness.

While Liberians have welcomed me warmly on return, certain microscopic elements have again sought to slow if not submerge my advance.

By Sat. night (3/25), two days in, the little throat tickle and cough I picked up over the Atlantic have morphed on down to a meaty bronchial invasion, credit and thanks at least partly to the airborne onslaught of road dust, exhaust and other encroaching unhealthinesses.

Since even mild misery loves company, why not have this phlegm-a-thon join with my perennial Liberian nemesis, the angry splotchy rash that starts promptly about the legs and arms, lays down a spectacularly colorful cacophony of pain and itch for a few days, and then relents, no doubt off to torment some other sitting-duck arrival in the tropics.

Hence, long before light Mon. I lay there embattled inside and out. Up to ingest another antibiotic, wash down the limbs, apply ice, elixirs (lavender oil) and ointments; then back under the covers, not to sleep (that's impossible) but to paint musings up there among the ceiling patterns ...

I travel back to Ghana, July, 2005. Jay asked a simple question in that first week together: "Will you help me?" "Yes," I said. Neither of us had any idea what that meant, whether or how it would roll out.

But roll out it has. First was the Youth for Human Rights International "African Human Rights Leadership Campaign." From 2006, the initiative grew annually across Liberia, Ghana and Sierra Leone, activating thousands of young people as human rights educators, teaching by example and deed. Many of the high schoolers who took part are now professionals, doctors, lawyers, educators, administrators, making their way to senior leadership.

With the astonishing 2013 failure of all 17,000 high school graduates to pass the University of Liberia entrance exam and Ebola's devastation (2014-2016), we have since directed full attention to illiteracy as the emanating human rights violation. Thus came our partnership with Applied Scholastics, with Mr. Hubbard's Study Tech to enable actual learning for competence over the prevailing "memorize for the test" mass education mindset.

I wander over our ensuing and most recent seven years - dubbed the African Literacy Campaign, working with local youth leaders and a series of accomplished American and South African educators - introducing Study Tech to Liberia's, and of late Ghana's, ministries, policymakers, teachers and students. ALC programs have included ● repeated teacher and student trainings in greater Monrovia and regional Liberian capitals Kakata and Tubmanburg; ● three years of delivery (2017-2019) through AMEU Monrovia's "Vacation Bridge" high school-college transition program; ● training the majority of instructors/professors at Cuttington University's Suakoko main campus; and ● the inevitable briefings to top government leaders and policymakers.

Body hemmed in and still taking pre-dawn fire by microbial special forces, I reach beyond these hotel room walls to the populations about to stir out there in the pre-dawn calm. Yes, all our work is commendable but at this rate and scope, it's a pebble to be buried under the molasses creep of millions without the ability to actually learn and the 40,000-plus teachers across this country with little clue on how to stem this tide.

Yet, now three mornings later (Wed.), bodily imprisonment is over, at last. Life is patient.

The "Counsellor," Kofi Woods, joins us for breakfast. He was a co-refugee in Sierra Leone with Jay, twin Steve and dad James during the 1990s Taylor days of terror. Kofi has been Jay's mentor ever since, going on some 30 years. I met him on my first trip here, when he was Ellen Johnson's Labor Minister, Jay his "special assistant."

Kofi greets but doesn't welcome me back. After my near-countless times here, there's very little need to remark that I went and returned.

As he tells it (reprinted in Speak Truth to Power, Human Rights Defenders Who are Changing Our World, K. Cuomo (Crown, 2000)):

"I was born in a zinc shack in Bushrod Island, a suburb of Monrovia. It is a place of squalor as a result of migrants from the rural areas coming to seek job opportunities. I was one of twenty or so children of my father - that alone created difficulties - no educational opportunities, no housing. And those conditions impressed upon me a perception of the world - the perpetual conflict between good and evil as expressed through political, social and economic systems ...

"[On the repression of the Doe Administration], I personally participated in an number of demonstrations between 1981 and 1985, until I was elected student president for the university and a leader of the national student organization in 1986. I was hunted on many occasions for my position on national issues. I went into hiding many times for my life ...

"Everyone was afraid. I was compelled to enroll in law school with the intent to defend those who would face [such repression]. In March of 1986, I got arrested and went to prison. That experience opened my eyes to the horrible situation ... people who were detained illegally, without charge, without due process, without the right to lawyers, with nobody to represent them. When I got out, I went straight to law school ...

"You are not motivated because you are a decent person, no. Sometimes it is a calling. And when there is a calling, there is no explanation for what motivates you ... Whether I like it or not God intended to use me in society in this way. I hold no malice against anyone. I believe hatred blurs the human sensibilities and diminishes the spirit. Those who hate me, criticize me, and vilify me purify my conviction and strengthen my courage.

"We all live in different societies ... But we must find our common ground. We must work together. And I think we can make this world a better place. When I attend funeral ceremonies and have to say anything, this is my favorite quote by Etienne de Grellet: 'I know I shall pass this way but once. And if there is anything I can do, any kindness I can show, any good thing I can do, let me do it now, for I shall not pass this way again.'"

Why would I keep coming back fated to again run the gauntlet of a multi-day Burning Man fungus-rage party on my legs and arms? Aren't I too old for that crap? Whatever "enough" means, haven't I done enough? Is this really worth the risk of malaria or God knows whatever African-strength affliction?

Returning, persevering are for moments like this, hanging with the good ones - Kofi and Jay - laughing flat out over the audacity of any hope to reverse the crushing chaos out there. But dare we might; and what a sublime exhilaration surrounds the prospect. I come back because these are Humanity's frontlines and there is no other more ecstatic immersion.

Tim Bowles
Paynesville, Liberia
Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Down the Road in Liberia

It's the pro bono work that brings the greatest compensation: The light in the eyes, hope rekindled, the dream of creating a future worth living. From last week's Letter from Liberia, the journey leads to Saturday, March 25, 2023.

***

Sometime this past December I think it was, Jay asked me what I was doing on March 25. Nothing in particular, I believe I said. Save the date, be in Liberia then, he said. OK, I said.

Into January, he kept insisting on March 25 (a Saturday) but wouldn't say why. Finally, I had to know. Global Cares is going to name the school after you, he said. What?, said I.

***

From my journal, on my first morning in Liberia, June 5, 2006 (less than three years after the shooting stopped):

"We load up the big red rolling bag with the audio-visual and head out south on the main road with Jay driving, myself riding shotgun, Mike, Teewon and Tom in the back. About three miles down, in Congo Town, we pass the abandoned, hulking mildewed concrete post-Apocalypse Defense Ministry from Samuel Doe's presidency. When Charles Taylor rolled to work in his armed-to-the-teeth Humvee convoy, he would have to pass this monument to Doe's ignominious 1990 defeat. Jay heads off to the right, in towards the nearby shoreline. He explains that this was the narrow road bypass that all traffic had to take when Taylor lived along the main road just up the way.

"We pass a three story apartment building with the outside walls and stairways blown away; yet still families are living on upper floor rooms, kids clinging, laundry hanging, exposed to the weather. We pass a woman holding a baby chimpanzee in diapers. Then there's a lagoon, concrete and barb wire enclaves of some wealthy, the poor living over embankments in thatch-walled and pole hovels, dirt yards, children naked in the blue, bright day.

"As the heat presses in, here are families - old down to very young - huddled on low benches and stools, hammering brown and grey rocks into small pieces, piled in short pyramids, then into white-fiberglass throw pillow-sized bags in rows on the shoulder of the road. They are selling these at $30 Liberian apiece, about 60 cents.

"We turn right at Paynesville, onto the airport road, through the first UN checkpoint and past the national "SKD" stadium (Samuel K Doe ...). We turn right again, onto a sandy, dirt track around 10:00, towards the surf. We come shortly to a spare, war-scarred house at our left, the Global CARES Mission Academy.

"From the stir as we approach, the whole student body is packed in there. Hard to see into the unlit space, but they're singing and clapping in full throated unison. A few of the younger ones are peeking and placing their fingers through the worn screens on the front walk. A handwritten poster board sign over the front door says:

"WELCOME MR. TIMOTHY BOWLES TO GLOBAL CARES MISSION ACADEMY. WE THE FACULTY, STAFF, STUDENTS AND FACULTY WARMLY WELCOME YOU AND HOPE YOU ENJOY YOUR VISIT TO LIBERIA."

"Mother Florence, the 4'10" headmistress - looking in her early 60s (but likely much younger), glowing face, tooth-gaped, hair pulled back tight, right side still black, left side grey - comes out, grabs my hands gently and will not let go. She is outpouring continual thanks that I have come, come to speak with the kids. I smile back.

"Florence guides me into the main room. It's 200 or so children on benches and at school desks, shoulder-to-shoulder, knee-to-knee, in this 20′ x 12′ space, all uniformed in blue shirt/blouse and darker blue shorts, the very little ones over here front left, the middle and then still older high school kids right and toward the back. All eyes are on the tall white guy in the Youth for Human Rights International "UNITED" t-shirt. Florence welcomes us.

"The air is still and very warm. As I am talking, sweat starts pouring. We have joked that the reason the UNITED t-shirts are black is because any other color would give away the profuse perspiration that goes on day after day during this work.

"Mother Florence gets the whole group to sing three or so Christian hymns in unison. It is full out and moving. I meet the senior head, Reverend Jerry. He is similarly short and spare, perhaps a little younger than Mother F.

"We are getting good answers on what human rights are, as well as examples of particular human rights and human rights abuses. There is a 12-year-old boy, one eye askew and sightless, and a 13 or 14-year-old girl that regularly volunteer to stand up and answer. Bright. I learn later that a large number of these young boys and girls are orphaned, taken in by Mother Florence and other nearby families. The ones with parents pay tuition. The parentless kids receive their education without charge.

"With our audio-visual ready to go (courtesy the generator we brought, now humming outside), Jay comes in and takes charge. He directs any volunteering kid to come up and stand in front of the class and explain loudly a human right to the others. The same half-sighted boy and the bright girl come up front with him. Jay expands on their answers and explains rights and responsibilities to the rest. He is terrific.

"The little kids are getting restless, but still pretty enthralled with the white man. A few students decide to take a nap on their arms. As we get ready to show the UNITED video, two little ones come forward, one leading the other who is apparently sick and walking home. Malaria?

"The music video is a big hit, projected on the bright white reverse side of the YHRI Liberia banner.

"Tom is thanking everyone for their attention and we are closing it up. Rev. Jerry wants to say a few words. No problem. He pulls out a handwritten speech that looks like it's going to be several pages long. He thanks us for coming. They have decided that Global CARES is YHRI's school, their official partner in educating their children.

"I sense what's coming and sure enough here it comes. Jerry envisions a fully funded school, with renovations of this modest building, or construction of their new one, followed by a nationwide expansion of the Global CARES vision, with schools throughout the counties.

"The students are now dispersing. Jerry, Florence and the staff would like to meet with me. I retire with the four or five school elders into a much smaller room, all squeezing into third grader school desks, chair with wooden writing surface jutting out.

"More introductions. Mother Florence walks over to me and reaches for my collar. With my rear stuck in that tiny desk, I am not going anywhere soon. Tugging, Florence puts the situation plainly: They need money, I have resources, and I am going to help them!

"Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised, but was more like stunned. I tell them no guarantee but I would do what I could."

***

And for the ensuing 17 years and counting, this is what I've done, with Jay's giant assistance and a lot of help from our generous friends back-in-the-States. All through these years, Florence and her principal Reuben Boe have held the fort. (Pretty sure Rev. Jerry was her husband; he passed about a decade ago.)

Florence shortly moved the school and orphanage to her sister's nearby property. One has to know where it is to find it, around a neighbor's wall on a non-descript side alley. The two structures are spare to place the best spin on it. Cinderblock construction, no glass windows, a few doors, dirt floors and wide open to mosquitos. The roof blew off the main building a few years back. (We helped with funds to put on a new one.)

Sleeping with and caring for the youngest ones - including Prince, Titus and others from infancy - Florence has weathered Ebola, COVID and every other existential crisis. Prince is now 15 or so, Titus around 12.

Still, with only our modest help, to put me in the school's name? Jay explained: We show up. Lots of visitors have blown in, promised stuff, and blown out without follow-up. Yet, we have come back on every Liberia trip and with some assistance: Sometimes cash, other times rice, supplies, books.

Truth be, Florence's and Reuben's names should be up there, but they were firm: TIMOTHY BOWLES GLOBAL CARES FOUNDATION SCHOOL, last and final demand, non-negotiable.

While diplomacy must prevail, it is ironic that I have spent the past 15-years of fundraising pronouncing that none of us contributing are in this to have buildings named after us. Be very careful what you resist.

Thus, March 25, 2023 has come. With our finance help, Jay has helped Florence and Reuben upgrade the buildings, ceilings, painting, electrical. They have set up the new crew of 200-ish uniformed charges, nursery - 12^th grade, under the huge tree in the yard, "dignitary" chairs off to the side. All are assembled. Several of our local team attend, Calvin, Mohammed, Esi. A big fuss is made. Music and two student speakers. Dep. Minister of Education Charles Vonleh presents certs to Jay and me. Mother Florence beats out my praises. The microphone is placed in my hands.

I reenact the Day One Mother Florence incident, calling her over to demonstrate. Laughter. I explain that I have felt welcome here and in Liberia ever since and, truth is, never really went home. You students are assigned the future. Like the huge tree that spreads over us all, if we older people have helped provide you shade under which you can build that future, we have done our job.

Pictures taken. Food and drink for the kids. We take our leave, to return before I leave the country next week. Florence, Reuben, kids don't yet know that I have also brought two packed suitcases of donated clothing and school supplies. More surprises in store.

Don't only dead people and really old farts get stuff dedicated to them? I am not dead yet but have I suddenly arrived at least on the edge of the latter?

Tim Bowles
Paynesville, Liberia
Saturday, March 25, 2023

SETTING THE STAGE

Employers who reserve the right to set compensation rates and pay random, unexpected discretionary bonuses should include a clear handbook policy confirming these points.

Policy Drafting Tips:

• Confirm compensation rates are set and/or revised upward and downward at the company's sole discretion in adherence with the California Fair Pay Act;
• Include a list of determining pay rate factors, such as the employee's demonstrated know-how and ability, and the job responsibilities' variety and demands;
• Remind employees that the occasional bonus not linked to any incentive, contract, policy or promise -- such as a holiday bonus -- is deemed discretionary; and
• Caution that any offer of a guaranteed or goal-conditioned bonus must be authorized and signed by an official representative.

Take-Away:

Implement and regularly review a comprehensive, clearly written handbook to include the above policy.

We publish this series to educate employers on best practices for a well-written handbook that assists applicants, employees, and management alike. To purchase our 2023 template handbook - which contains the above policy and much more - and accompanying forms or for more information, please contact Office Manager Aimee Rosales at 626.583.6600 or email her at officemgr@tbowleslaw.com.

See also:

• Handbook Helper Episode 20 Overtime Policy- Burning The Midnight Oil (March 9, 2023)
• Disorder Insurance - Workplace Policy Handbook & Forms for 2023 (March 2, 2023)
• Do The Math - California Supreme Court Sets Out New Formula for Overtime When "Flat Sum" Bonuses Paid" (March 22, 2018)

Cindy Bamforth
March 24, 2023

Another World, Made from America

I have on occasion offered glimpses of my volunteer work in West Africa. My Pro-Bono Life: Purpose is Prime: Why West Africa? Why Literacy? (February 20, 2023); Small Planet, Big Dreams; African Literacy Campaign in Liberia and Ghana (October 14, 2022). I have been back Liberia in for a week, with these thoughts over the first few days.

***

I can sense Africa long before return, this time a vague flower-plus-charcoal scent on warm current in a Clearwater parking lot. Yes, going back.

Liberia, for one, has long since been a visitor's novelty for me. Safe that 17 years' of returning earns one more than a tourist stamp. Incredible that it's been that long. Snap your fingers and all of a sudden 2006 is 2023.

Thus, upon three flights over 24 hours starting in Tampa (to New York, to Accra, to Monrovia), Jay at the wheel and I are again pulling out of the Robertsfield terminal (Thu., 3/23). He has positioned his driver in the backseat to watch over shoulder and chase down anyone who ventures to liberate one of the four suitcases piled in our open short-bed behind.

We catch-up on the 40 slow miles to "Town," the sun sliding away before us. Foremost is the T-word, traffic. National election year? No better time for the Weah Administration to show the people results - or at least attempted results. Thus, before the rainy season (starts in May if not sooner), there are crews all along widening on either side the two lanes to multiple, digging, grading, smoothing. This renders the paved roadway inescapable, no shoulders, instead a cut on both sides high/deep enough to roll a vehicle if tires stray over the side.

The whole flow is at the mercy of any breakdown, with stories of post-work drives not ending until 1:00 a.m. Emergency services? Ha, ha, ha but not really a joke, e.g., the seven people who died the day before arrival in a fiery multi-vehicle crash some 300 feet from my "RLJ" hotel turnoff.

Nowhere in evidence were these horrible flaming deaths as we pass the spot the next night. Instead, it is business as usual, jammed cars, putt-putts, cycles and their riders all destination bound. No irony, just a case-in-point. It's Liberia man, the land and people starkly unique to all the Continent. Of course, every corner of Africa is distinct but Liberia?! Yep, stand-out exceptional.

With some 1.3M U.S. African slaves at the time, the 1804 success of the brutal Haitian Black slave revolution created some not-so-slight concern among the American powerful. "Send them back to where they came from" is not a new refrain. Patterned on Sierra Leone - an African-American colony of formerly enslaved on the African-Atlantic coast financed by British interests - the American Colonization Society sailed the first "returnees" in 1820 to find a foothold in the same region.

By the 1847 founding of the Republic of Liberia, the ACS and similar initiatives had landed some 4,000 on that "Windward-" or "Pepper Coast." To shore up against white domination the "love of liberty" that brought them here, the freed settlers limited citizenship to those of Negroid descent. Yet, they also brought America with them, now standing as the entitled and advantaged elite ruling against the supposedly ignorant "aborigines" living up the rivers and in the hinterlands.

Flick forward past so many iterations of the coast-hugging colonizer "haves" against the up-country tribes - with the concurrent cycle-upon-cycle of the elites borrowing heavily from British and American finance to make their extravagant ends meet -- and we arrive at 1980 when Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe - of the southeastern Krahn tribe -- lead the coup that murdered President Tolbert and cabinet, replacing 100-plus years of privileged rule with Doe's People's Redemption Council.

Ten years later, 1990, Doe was deposed and killed in turn by now-convicted war criminal Charles Taylor and his allies. The ensuing 13-years of ruthless civil conflict finally ended with Taylor's 2003 exile and U.N. occupation.

As we make the turn into RLJ on this March Thursday evening - and with its three national election cycles of relative peace (2005, 2011, 2017) -- Liberia is a country rated among the three most poverty stricken planetwide, over half of its 4M-plus population too young to have experienced the child soldier-lead genocides and most of these functionally illiterate.

Jay and I are back out on the road toward town next day (3/24) at 7:00 a.m., even that hour not early enough to risk major vehicle freeze. It's also not too early for long lines of locals outside polling stations aiming to be among first for voting registration on the fall presidential election.

I have no claim to understand the horizons and hopes of these many. Modest means is a triumphant understatement. The scene each side of most any road reflects the forces confining them: A table top economy with its meagre returns; the big-guy Lebanese and Asians keeping capital within their circles; government support for the status quo won by status quo feeding government corruption; an education system based on rote learning. Against such odds, what could anyone standing in those voting registration lines reasonably regard as a feasible future? Yet, here they are, showing up, trusting, hoping, speaking by action.

I too have been showing up here for 17 years, but that's an off-and-on thing. Fact is I've always had that plane ride back to my far-off infrastructure-stocked home and all the other presumed entitlements of my American station.

OK, so I am a relative outsider, but there's a question here I find legitimate. Is Liberia a "never again" post-genocide country in practice or in name only? The disparity here in this just-below-chaotic main city community is endemic, starting with the arrivals 200 years back. Education-less youth fueled the 14-years of genocide (1989-2003). Today's un- and under-educated young don't have that deterring horror in their histories. "Never again" is not part of their vocabulary.

Although one only need close his eyes and point to these 360 degree realities, the picture is not prevailing gloom. There is here laughter, music, beauty, intelligence and creativity to the point of brilliance. Here, palpably, there is at work the strongest force on Earth: The resilience and determination of the human spirit.

That grabbed me the first time I showed up here (2006). It suggests that despite the sometimes spectacular aggravation that comes with this territory, one might just keep showing up and try to help out. It suggests that some further bloody national cataclysm is not in the cards or the stars, if the keystone human right to meaningful, competency based learning can be secured for this younger generation and every generation to follow.

American author and humanitarian L. Ron Hubbard's Study Technology or "Study Tech" is the missing ingredient. That it enables instructor and student to embrace and apply any subject at hand is remarkable enough. Its deeper utility is to provide every individual with the lifetime power of understanding and with that, the recognition of citizenship's responsibilities and the certainty of fulfilling them.

And so we work ...

Tim Bowles
Paynesville, Liberia
Friday, March 24, 2023

Not So Fondly Recollected

Roofer Unforgettable Coatings and its Final Touch painting subsidiary have agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) $3.6 million for falsifying pay records, not paying overtime, having employees work on weekends without pay, and intimidating those employees who dared to complain about their illegal practices. The citations involved hundreds of workers in Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Idaho.

As in many such cases, it was workers' rights advocates - in this case, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades and Arriba Las Vegas Worker Center - that brought the problems to the DOL's attention after some of the mistreated employees contacted them.

The DOL claimed that with its investigation pending Unforgettable owner Cory Summerhays retaliated, cutting pay and reducing hours for workers who cooperated with the government.

After the DOL obtained a court order prohibiting management from continuing such actions, Summerhays and his companies settled with the agency for:

• $3.6 million in back wages and liquidated damages for 593 employees, including $1,809,249.77 and an equal amount in liquidated damages;
• $50,000 in civil penalties for willful violations; and
• $18,092 in interest

The court-approved agreement also contains a permanent order for these employers to properly calculate and pay overtime, to allow employees to discuss pay, and to comply with numerous other federal employment law requirements.

Take-Aways: Employers need to treat their employees fairly and always comply with legal standards for wages and hours of work. They must not retaliate against workers for asserting their rights to proper pay and treatment.

For further information, please contact Tim Bowles, Cindy Bamforth or Helena Kobrin.

See also:

• Handbook Helper Episode 20 - Overtime Policy Burning the Midnight Oil (March 9, 2023)
• Cautionary Tale Episode 64 - Dept. Of Labor Half-Million Assessment Against Four California Care Homes- Feds Target Caregiving Industries (March 3, 2023)
• The Basics of Overtime - Five Rules for California (April 27, 2018)

Helena Kobrin
March 17, 2023