Posted on April 9th, 2020
Below is a complete transcript of this video.
Speaker 1: (00:00)
What is your, I don’t know if you could even say, but, but what is your company’s overall FOBTs on, where this is going to go and, if there’s even a strategy to combat any of these potential pitfalls that the politicians keep putting in our [inaudible].
Speaker 2: (00:23)
Certainly, I’m not speaking on behalf of anyone except for myself right now and just the research I’ve done in the last couple of weeks.
But I would think it’s about really good communication, really, really good frequent communication between management and the employee because very few employees are even working right now.
If you have a non-exempt employee working from home, I mean, who would that even be? It’d be such a rare, uh, lawyers, but they’re, they will be exempt.
So if you have a who needs to take meal breaks and rest breaks and so on, right. It’s a very limited, very small group. So most of the people will be lawyers who, you know, we don’t ever take lunch breaks or rest breaks or you know, get paid for overtime or any of those things.
But if you keep that really good communication with your hourly workers who are actually still reporting to work, then you can, you know, avoid, I think a lot of heartache later on. Just thank you for being here. Thanks for continuing to work when the whole world is going crazy.
You know, we’re really proud and you should be proud to still have a job and still be getting paid when all these, you know, changes are being made left and right and we don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, but for today, thank you.
You know, if you just keep that line of communication open, then when a problem comes up, hopefully your employee would come to you rather than going to the labor board or to plaintiff’s attorney.
Speaker 1: (02:03)
Yeah. I’m trying to think of the pitfalls and the pitfalls I’ve identified as is basically the wage and hour stuff. But I’m trying to figure out with everything that’s coming down, what are the obvious pitfalls?
You know, I was thinking today that with all the stuff coming out, and then when I read it and I go, Hey, but this is going to cause this problem.
Or when a client calls me and makes me think of like, I love Lucy, you know what I mean? Where the government is like Lucy, they’re trying to do some good, but then they just screw everything up and then make, make bigger problems.
And so it’s very tough to even answer specific questions from clients. You know, where a client says this is very specific instance. Like this person has this situation and what do I do?
Speaker 1: (02:54)
And then it’s like, okay, today this is what you do, but tomorrow it, this may be terrible advice because, because these things, you know, just keep changing daily. Right?
So, so what do you do except try to figure out the most common sense thing, you know, but you know, if, if some good came out of this, it’s certainly making, um, uh, my litigation negotiations go better because now it’s like, Hey, that, that money that you were demanding, it’s not there.
You gotta you gotta go way lower because my client does not have an operating business right now. So I know you have a lawsuit pending, but so what, you know, the courts are basically shut down and the businesses are shut down.
So what money is it that you’re coming after? So, um, I must say in the last week, I’ve gotten some really good results based on that, but that still doesn’t, uh, that’s still doesn’t help.
Speaker 1: (03:52)
Uh, yeah. You know, the, the, the business owners and you know, what’s, what’s, um, what bothers me about California and the way we’ve w California leadership things is that tax, the businesses are the productive people. Right? And then use that tax for whatever they use it for, you know, wastefulness or whatever an emergency happens. Okay.
How are the business owners going to kind of solve this problem for us? You know, and, and without even the, the, using all of that entrepreneurial brain power that could probably solve a lot of these problems for them.
You know, it’s just basically take from them and we’ll figure out how to solve it. But because they’re not business owners, they’ve never, they don’t know the effect of it.
They think there’s no difference between Exxon and the restaurant on the corner. They just think it’s flush with money. But
Speaker 2: (04:45)
it does seem that way. I mean, given how the laws are written, sometimes it seems like no, no one who’s writing them has actually run a business before. But this is a really different times.
So I mean in line with communicating with your employees, it just seems like a really good time to be incredibly flexible, to be understanding, to realize a lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck from every level in the business.
It doesn’t matter how much money’s coming in. Some people are very good at spending money, so it’s just a very good time to be flexible and understanding.
And I think that some of the laws even speak to that I just read about, I mean I think, you know already in the federal law that came out, there’s payroll tax credits that are available. Obviously tax filing, deadlines have been pushed back and so on.
Speaker 2: (05:37)
And so there was also a charitable donation credit and I think it was like, I want to say, Oh I can’t remember something, few hundred dollars or they increased the amount that you can credit back without having to itemize it on your tax return.
But just putting money together, other people in this crazy, insane time because there are really, I mean there are resources available, but a lot of them come out of the pockets of the employer.
So you have, you know, if your hours were cut as an employee, then you can apply for uninsurance, I mean for unemployment insurance. But you as the employer had been paying into that for however long.
If the employee can’t work because they’re, they caught Corona virus, then they can file for disability insurance. But as the employer, you’ve been paying for that. And then of course if they caught the disease while they were working the check stand at Ralph’s, then they’re at work.
Speaker 2: (06:34)
And so they can file a workers’ comp claim. But whose mod rate and a premium is that going to affect, you know, so there’s like many layers of, and then, of course, you have your sick pay and any other paid time off that you are going to offer.
And then the forced sick leave and paid time off that. Now even the federal government and the city of LA is going to increase. So it’s just a lot of resources are available, but they seem to be, it is what you said. You know, the business owners are becoming responsible, let’s take care of it.
Speaker 1: (07:07)
So, so, uh, I’ve terminated lots of people in my life and I’ve never liked any of it. Yeah. It’s never fun even whether they deserve it or not.
Sometimes it’s just a layout. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out. Sometimes they’re just bad employees. You’ve got to get rid of them. And that’s the question I get that I’m getting most, like what’s the liability if I, you know, lay these people off.
Some employers have taken this as an opportunity to, to lay off, um, bad employees cause they’re like, Oh, Corona, Mars. But I’ve been like, Whoa, Whoa, wait a minute.
So this will be retaliation if that’s the only person that you’re laying off, that’s an easy retaliation claim in my mind. Right? So, um, Hey, I’m a business is thriving in this because I’m delivering or whatever other ones are thriving.
Speaker 1: (07:55)
And there’s this one particular person that I want to get rid of. Well, you should, if you’re going to get rid of them, it should be because of caused not using this Coronavirus thing because at the end of the day, you lay them off, you don’t lay anybody else off, right?
So it’s not a business need based on the coronavirus. And if you have a legit reason to terminate them in subordination late all the time, whatever it is, that’s a better reason to me than trying to use the Corona buyers as an excuse because, because at least I can say no, I wasn’t retaliating.
Look, look at all the problems that the this employee has been. Whereas if I lay off and say no coronavirus and they come back and say, no, they retaliated against me because I’m Chinese. Right? that’s the example. I’ve always used Chinese, but maybe I should revisit that in a coronavirus era.
Speaker 1: (08:52)
So they laid me off, uh, they laid me off because I’m Chinese, right? And then you would then come back and say, no, it wasn’t Chinese cause they were this terrible employee.
They’re like, okay, well why didn’t you terminate them for that? Why did you use this excuse and not to, uh, not lay off anybody else, you know?
So my advice this week has been, don’t just use this as an excuse because you, you can, you know, because I think that’s just gonna uh, you know, backfire. What, what are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: (09:27)
Yeah. I mean, no one should be using the Coronavirus as an excuse because no one, I know one, it’s bad karma and it doesn’t look good. I mean, imagine if you’re the first employer who’s firing someone for coronavirus or the first person back in line at eviction court evicting someone for coronavirus.
I mean, how terrible is that going to reflect on you and your business? And there’s just too much, too many people are trying to make memes and you know, little things they can send around online that, uh, make jokes about all of these issues.
And you just don’t want to be the one who’s, you know, the example. And also there are some retention incentives you can have as an employer. So if you look at the federal law that was passed, it’s called the family’s first act.
They have some, you know, I don’t know if it’s a tax credit or payroll credit or what, but there’s definitely incentives to retain employees. Yeah.
