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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.
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
Roofer Unforgettable Coatings and its Final Touch painting subsidiary have agreed to pay the U.S.
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:
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:
Helena Kobrin
March 17, 2023
California employers must ensure hourly workers receive additional one-hour “ split shift” pay when scheduled or required to work two distinct work periods in the same workday separated by more than a one-hour meal break, such as an...
California employers must ensure hourly workers receive additional one-hour “split shift” pay when scheduled or required to work two distinct work periods in the same workday separated by more than a one-hour meal break, such as an employee who works the 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. shift and returns for the 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. shift.
That premium must be at the state minimum wage or applicable local minimum wage, whichever is greater. However, the employer may use all amounts paid a worker above minimum wage to offset any split shift premium owing that worker. See example in What’s New for 2019 Juggling Daily Work Times (December 12, 2018).
If employees voluntarily request the split shift for their own convenience or to pick up an extra shift, then no extra pay is required. Regardless, split shift premium has no impact or effect on overtime.
The employer must separately itemize split shift premium payment(s) on the employee’s pay stub.
A handbook policy should define split shifts and prohibit split shift scheduling without advance supervisor permission.
Take-Aways:
Implement and regularly review a comprehensive, clearly written handbook to include a split shift 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:
Cindy Bamforth
March 16, 2023
The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently confirmed that a former worker’s self-professed speculation that her employer terminated her due to her age and national origin was insufficient to establish a discrimination claim.
The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently confirmed that a former worker’s self-professed speculation that her employer terminated her due to her age and national origin was insufficient to establish a discrimination claim. Opara v. Yellen.
Joan Opara served for 27 years as an IRS Revenue Officer. After the agency terminated her for alleged unauthorized access to tax returns of friends and associates, she claimed the firing was improperly motivated by her age (over 39) and national origin (Nigerian) in violation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. On review of the elements of federal age and national discrimination claims, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the lower court’s pre-trial dismissal of her case for lack of sufficient evidence.
To determine an employee’s liability for age discrimination:
The plaintiff-employee must establish a prima facie (“at first sight” or “first impression”) case, including: (1) her or his membership in the protected class (40 years old or older, employed by a company with 20 or more on payroll); (2) satisfactory job performance; (3) discharge; and (4) replacement by “substantially younger employees with equal or inferior qualifications”; and
If the employer can then “articulate some legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for the challenged action,” the employee must show that the articulated reason is pretextual, “either: (1) directly, by showing that unlawful discrimination more likely than not motivated the employer; (2) indirectly, by showing that the employer’s proffered explanation is ‘unworthy of credence’ because it is internally inconsistent or otherwise not believable; or (3) via a combination of these two kinds of evidence.”
While the Ninth Circuit panel found Opara had satisfied the prima facie step to take her case to trial, she failed to adequately deflate the IRS’s showing of legitimate bases for her termination -- i.e., her various reported violations of the tax return access laws -- as false, pretextual justifications.
Opara’s sole evidence was her “uncorroborated and self-serving testimony.” To qualify her case for a trial, Opara would have to have presented more than “mere conclusory allegations.”
The appeals court also agreed with the lower court’s dismissal of Opara’s national origin discrimination claims for the same reason, not sufficient independent indication of the employer’s pretext.
Take-Aways:
Unfortunately, frivolous workplace discrimination accusations are not rare. The Opara decision underscores that when an employer can show a former worker is just speculating about improper discrimination in his/her termination, it can avoid trial.
See also:
Tim Bowles
March 10, 2023
California employers must pay overtime to non-exempt employees for work in excess of eight hours per workday or 40 hours per workweek. Companies should thus include a clear handbook policy describing such rules.
California employers must pay overtime to non-exempt employees for work in excess of eight hours per workday or 40 hours per workweek.
Companies should thus include a clear handbook policy describing such rules.
Policy Drafting Tips:
Take-Aways:
Implement and regularly review a comprehensive, clearly written handbook to include an overtime 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:
Cindy Bamforth
March 9, 2023
The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the federal Department of Labor has aimed a compliance initiative at home health services, nursing homes, residential facilities and other employers focusing on care services.
The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the federal Department of Labor has aimed a compliance initiative at home health services, nursing homes, residential facilities and other employers focusing on care services. In 1,600 investigations since 2021, the WHD has found violations in 80 percent of the cases, recovering “$28.6 million in "back wages and damages for nearly 25,000 workers,” plus “assessments of nearly $1.3 million in civil monetary penalties for willful violations.”
The highest number of violations were for misclassification of employees as independent contractors or failure to pay minimum wage or overtime.
In January 2023, the WHD announced $500,584 in back wages and liquidated damages (an award doubling the amount of wages owed) against four care homes in the Sacramento area – Nwabeke Care Home, Peer Home Inc., L&S Gentle Care Inc., and Bedette’s Place Inc.—and their owners, including violations for minimum wage, overtime and time records.
WHD District Director Cesar Avila stated: “The majority of care workers are women and low-wage earners who provide essential services for those most in need in our communities. The U.S. Department of Labor is committed to holding care service employers accountable and ensuring their workers are paid in full and as required by federal law.”
As we have written, this is an industry that California’s Labor Commissioner also has in its sights.
Take-Aways:
Employers in the care industry need to protect their businesses from being the next target. They must understand and implement state and federal employment requirements. Those looking to open such facilities should determine their employment obligations in advance and ensure their business model will enable them to pay what is required. Consulting with a knowledgeable employment attorney is crucial for getting it right.
For further information, please contact Tim Bowles, Cindy Bamforth or Helena Kobrin.
See also:
Helena Kobrin
March 3, 2023
Employers must maintain complete and accurate timekeeping records, whether electronic, handwritten, or punch clock.
Employers must maintain complete and accurate timekeeping records, whether electronic, handwritten, or punch clock.
Such records protect all concerned, for example enabling an employer to refute a nonexempt employee’s claims for unpaid overtime, off-the-clock hours worked, and missed, shortened or late meal breaks.
Thus, a properly drafted timekeeping policy is crucial.
Drafting Tips:
Take-Aways:
Implement and regularly review a comprehensive, clearly written handbook to include a timekeeping 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:
Cindy Bamforth
February 24, 2023
The California Legislature has tried for years to stop mandatory arbitration provisions in employment contracts. The Governor or a court has overruled each such effort because of conflict with the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).
The California Legislature has tried for years to stop mandatory arbitration provisions in employment contracts. The Governor or a court has overruled each such effort because of conflict with the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA).
The latest attempt, AB 51, an admittedly attempted end run around the FAA, was to become effective on January 1, 2020, but was stopped by an injunction.
AB 51 inconsistently: (1) prohibited an employer from requiring any employee to waive a right provided under the California Labor Code or Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) (including the right to take claims to court); and (2) made violations a civil and criminal offense; but (3) allowed enforcement of arbitration contracts, even if signed unlawfully.; See What’s New in 2020 California Prohibits Mandatory Employee Arbitration Agreements (December 18, 2019). While AB 51 prohibited waivers of Labor Code and FEHA rights generally, the true target was arbitration clauses.
AB 51’s undoing was that it once again violated the FAA. State laws conflicting with national laws such as the FAA are invalid. “Because the FAA’s purpose is to further Congress’s policy of encouraging arbitration, and AB 51 stands as an obstacle to that purpose,” the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (over California) has now ruled in United States Chamber of Commerce v. Bonta that AB 51 violates the FAA and is preempted.
The court stated that AB 51 “resulted in the oddity that an employer subject to criminal prosecution for requiring an employee to enter into an arbitration agreement could nevertheless enforce that agreement once it was executed.”
California can still ask the full 9th Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court to review this decision. If one of those courts accepts such a request, stay tuned for the next round.
Employers need to be aware that employees can still challenge arbitration agreements on general contract principles, such as threats, physical coercion, heavily one-sided terms (called “unconscionability”). However, statutes may not penalize employers for the mere act of entering into such an agreement or enforcing a valid one.
Take-Aways:
The subject of mandatory arbitration in employment agreements has been on a roller coaster in California for many years. The safest practice dictates consulting knowledgeable employment counsel who stay up-to-date on the latest requirements for employment arbitration agreements and can advise accordingly.
For further information, please contact Tim Bowles, Cindy Bamforth or Helena Kobrin.
See also:
Helena Kobrin
February 24, 2023
While some say that the past one hundred years delivered lessons that have enabled a more stable and interdependent world, we need not look very far for signs to the contrary - decaying, ineffective educational systems, growing...
While some say that the past one hundred years delivered lessons that have enabled a more stable and interdependent world, we need not look very far for signs to the contrary - decaying, ineffective educational systems, growing pharmaceutical dependence for emotional "stability," environmental deterioration, and destruction of human rights and civil liberties to "fight" faceless terrorism. These herald this emerging Twenty-First Century as more anguished and inhumane than the one that has just passed.
I became a lawyer in the 1970s infused with the idealism of the time. I have since tried to best use my profession to support the basic rights -- and to promote the responsibility -- of humankind to create and change conditions for the better.
I first journeyed to West Africa to assist Mary Shuttleworth for a week-long Youth for Human Rights International conference in Ghana, July, 2005. That was the plan: one week, meet a few young people, help with speeches on the U.N’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, go home to frame a few pictures for the desk and continue the law practice full time.
Change of plans. A skinny kid named Joseph Jay Yarsiah from some country called Liberia also showed up at that conference. Over the week we hung-out, he described the unbelievably savage 14-year-long Liberian civil war (1989 – 2003) in which he had grown up. This was a region notorious for child soldiers, kids as young as 7 or 8 years old reduced to mindless killing machines as graphically portrayed in the motion picture Beasts of No Nation (2015).
Jay told of his family’s repeated miraculous escapes from torture and execution. Yet, he was not bent on rage and revenge despite all the reasons otherwise. Rather, Jay was calmly and resolutely determined by human rights and literacy to help bring his country and people out of their hell-on-Earth.
At the end of that week (again, this was July, 2005), Jay asked: “Will you help me?” That was THE cross-roads moment. I thought, “oh man, I am just a lawyer from L.A., what can I do? So unfair to ask me that question!” Yet, an admonishment rang loud inside my head: “The wrong thing to do is … nothing.” So, I said yes.
I returned to West Africa ten months later, May, 2006, flying into Liberia to meet Jay and his intrepid band of 20-something colleagues. Devastation unfolded in the gathering darkness on the 40-mile drive to town: the airport a military base for 15,000 U.N. peacekeepers keeping the warring factions from further slaughter; dirt poor roadside population; five heavily fortified checkpoints before reaching the capital Monrovia; no electricity and no running water; and a generation of young starkly illiterate after over a decade of a ruined, bombed-out education system.
Were the challenges insurmountable: illiteracy, poverty, corruption, injustice? The real question was and is whether one is willing to fulfill the first prerequisite no matter the odds: to show up.
We thus created the YHRI African Human Rights Leadership Campaign, eventually activating thousands of youth as human rights educators in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana to make a difference, socially, culturally and economically. The seeds so planted have bloomed: doctors, educators and other civil servants and, dare I admit, lawyers.
That “Campaign” effort (2006 – 2013) was prelude. In August, 2013 came news that every one of the 17,000 high school graduates applying to the University of Liberia had flunked the entrance exam. Explanation: a newly appointed minister had changed the grading from a bell curve to a 70% proficiency standard. … and not a one passed. Result: greater powers promptly sacked the minister.
The word “education” is from the Latin educere, to “lead out.” If education is the systematic giving and receiving instruction for application, it must mean someone is doing the leading. But with education systems built on rote memory and institutions fraught with incompetence and corruption, the questions in Liberia and West Africa were and are who is actually doing any leading and to what end?
So in 2014 we turned focus to UDHR Article 26, the right to meaningful education, partnering with Applied Scholastics International, an NGO offering solution to illiteracy through the proven effective learning methods of American author L. Ron Hubbard, widely known as “Study Technology ” or “Study Tech.”
Nearing two decades of work in the region, I have never been more optimistic. Year-after-year, our African Literacy Campaign continues to deliver “competency-based education” workshops and training to teachers, students and administrators. Time and again, Study Tech’s learning tools inspire educators and youth to view life with new eyes, with hope that in their hands are the means to make the impossible possible for self, family, community and country.
Only through an effective literacy education movement -- equipping the emerging generations with competent, courageous leadership -- can West Africa emerge from the wars, corruptions and other disasters that have plagued the region for too long. We aim to contribute in ways that can make a true difference toward this worthy end.
I went to Africa for one week but never came home. And so we work.
Tim Bowles
February 17, 2023