Month: April 2019

Whether To Sign A Non-disclosure Agreement

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Steven Sutton is the owner of the Law Offices of Steven R. Sutton and a commercial litigator in New York City. According to Sutton, for employers who are trying to protect their businesses, having new employees sign non-disclosure agreements is a great way to ensure that company information and trade secrets dont get out in the event of an employees departure.

Employment issues are a key part of my firms business, and I have acted as a commercial litigator for New York clients on both sides of this type of case. We have had employers coming to use and asking to have non-disclosure agreements drafted as a way to tie their employees in to the company, and we have also had employees come to us to ask about what the details in the agreement they signed really mean.

On the Employers End
On one hand, for business owners, having their employees sign an airtight non-disclosure or non-compete agreement can be very important in keeping company secrets confidential. These contracts are particularly important when dealing with senior-level management, and any other employees who are privy to very sensitive or confidential company information. Companies that require employees to sign non-disclosure agreements can prohibit these employees from sharing any information that a person outside of the company would not ordinarily be aware of, and having these provisions in place can be key from the employers point of view.

Especially for companies in the health and fitness industries, having these agreements in place is the only way to protect secret client lists and keep sensitive information out of the hands of competing organizations. When a company hires a new personal trainer, it would never want him or her to tell people who the companys famous celebrity clients are. And in addition to that, the company would need to prevent that new trainer from using its client list if he or she were to create a new personal training business in the future.

Besides client lists, in the case of health and fitness companies, non-disclose agreements can also prevent employees from taking their companys techniques or training methods if they leave in the future. In fact, provisions in these agreements can be written to prevent employees from exposing any and all confidential trade secrets to outsiders once employment with the company has been terminated.

From the Employees Perspective
On the other hand, these agreements can take a much different turn for the employees themselves. Rather than protecting them, many employees feel like the contracts they are being asked to sign could actually be prohibiting them from seeking employment with other companies in the future. I have worked with people who said they didnt know what they were getting into when they signed a non-disclosure agreement, and later found out that the agreement they signed essentially prevented them from earning a living in the future.

Very often, when people sign these non-compete contracts, they are not sure whether it does or does not apply to potential future positions. Unfortunately, the contracts that are signed during employment are valid once that employment is over, and certain provisions can in fact prevent people from working in the same field or industry for a period of time once their employment with the company has been terminated. While every contract is different, some non-compete agreements specify that employees may not work in any industry within a certain geographic area once their employment has ended. From the employees standpoint, these types of contracts can be litigated and negotiated. In New York, hiring a commercial litigator to argue the case is a common next step after receiving notice of termination.

What a Lawyer Can Help
Any employees who feel that the contracts they signed were unfair should certainly consult with a commercial litigator for help. If the client feels that the non-compete contract he signed should not be valid, the lawyer would attempt to get rid of any temporary restraining orders that prevent the client from earning a living or feeding his family. By arguing that the non-compete provisions of the agreement should be interpreted in a different way, the attorney will help a lot.

In New York especially, these types of agreements are not always valid, depending on the facts of the case. The only way to determine whether a particular non-disclosure agreement is, in fact, valid is to have a professional attorney give it a close look. Our law firm has actually litigated some of these issues pretty extensively in the Supreme Court in New York, and we have had quite a bit of success in advising employees of what they can and cannot do.

This article is for informational purposes only. You should not rely on this article as a legal opinion on any specific facts or circumstances, and you should not act upon this information without seeking professional counsel. Publication of this article and your receipt of this article does not create an attorney-client relationship.

How To Spot employment Gaps Lies

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Defining questionable “employment gaps”

Questionable employment gaps are periods on a resume or job application that can’t be verified. Some of the most popular false claims used to cover employment gaps are:

– Freelancing
– Business Owner
– Fictitious Out Of Business Company

A clever and sneaky employee can get these lies past an employer who is not conducting a careful and thorough employee background screening. Most employers do not have the in-house resources to verify these claims. When an employer conducts a background check on their own they will usually only get information on the position held, dates of employment and if the candidate is eligible for rehire.

Fortunately, even for freelance and closed businesses, there is a paper trail. Genuine freelancers and business owners must apply for a fictitious business name and a business license. This is a requirement for most cities regardless of where the work will be performed. For a freelancer, a business license is required even if he or she works from home.

Unfortunately, tracking this information can be confusing and time consuming for most personnel departments and small business owners. Getting the most accurate information is usually best left to a professional pre-employment screening firm, such as Accu-Screen, Inc. They have the resources and experience to readily search and provide the most up to date and accurate information.

Questionable “employment gaps”

Employers need to be careful not to jump to conclusions because freelance and business information may not be readily verified. When this occurs, the employer should request clarification from the job applicant. An employer should ask for references from past clients, projects worked on and milestones. Most freelancers and business owners should be able to give you business references, detailed information on projects and accomplishments.

Similarly, for a situation where a business is no longer operating, a job seeker should be able to provide verification of employment. Verification can include paystubs, tax return, offer of employment letter or proof of any type of recognition received, while employed at the company.

A red flag should be raised if the job seeker can’t provide additional information to verify claims of freelancing, owning a business or a company that is no longer open for business.

Problems with employees who lie about “employment gaps”

When an “employment gap” is discovered, an employer needs to be concerned about the reasons for it. Periods of employment gaps that can’t be verified may be associated with:

– Incarceration
– Involuntary termination

Some job seekers are unlucky while others are just plain deceitful. A professional employment background screening firm, such as Accu-Screen, Inc., can help get to the bottom of these issues by obtaining the most appropriate and accurate information.

When an applicant has these issues in their past or fails to report them, an employer should proceed with caution. These issues need to be handled confidentially and with diplomacy. The issue should be addressed and clarification should be reached before a job offer is made.

Oil Rig Employment How To Get Hired Faster

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The world still runs on oil, with no viable substitute in sight, and prospects for oil rig employment remain strong. While there is a recession going on and a few oil companies are keeping their oil rigs idle (and retrenching workers), other oil companies are actually hiring more workers to man their oil rigs. As long as you look for offshore oil rig jobs in the right place, you can still get a job.

Have you ever worked in oil rig jobs? If not, this is a good time for you to get some subsidized training. The Department of Labor has a JobCorp program works with technical colleges training for disadvantaged youths. Some of their training programs are relevant to the oil and gas industry.

Even if you don’t meet the requirements for subsidized training, you may want to pay your own way. Remember that oil rig employment pays two times more than any other industry for doing the same job. If the training increases your chances of getting oil rig jobs, isn’t it worthwhile?

Apart from oil rig specific training, you should also aim for a few other certifications – offshore survival, helicopter underwater escape training and first aid. In addition, get your passport, vaccinations and medical certificates ready and up-to-date. Some states or countries may have additional paperwork you need to comply with. Remember to do some reading on maritime law – in some countries offshore oil rigs legally count as ships.

Make sure you have a bag packed and ready to go. Get your personal affairs settled ahead of time – your insurance, mortgage, property taxes, utilities bills and phone bills, etc. If you get a job offer, you want to start ASAP. It is foolish to delay – this only gives time for things to go wrong.

Don’t worry about the recession, there is still plenty of oil rig employment available. You just need to look in the right places. Just get all your training and paperwork ready ahead of time so that the human resource department has no excuse to shred your resume.

The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Pre-employment Drug-screens

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Many organizations consider pre-employment drug screening as an effective strategy to save their workplace from unwanted conflicts due to the drug abusers. Pre-employment drug screening is a proactive measure companies take to maintain high productivity environment. It helps them to make the workplace safer, and their employees free from frequent sick leaves and to prevent drug abuse on the job.

The Advantages of Pre-Employment Drug Screens
Pre-employment drug testing has many advantages.

Pre-employment drug testing helps organizations to check drug-abuse habits of the job applicants. Thus, it helps them to avoid hiring people with habit of frequent drug abuse.
Pre-employment drug testing not only helps organizations to create a safer and drug-free workplace but also reduces or avoids their chances of handling any future conflicts due to the drug abused employees in their organization. These conflicts include workplace violence or accidents, health benefit utilization and costs, lowered productivity, high insurance premiums, and frequent health-related absences.
The pre-employment drug-screening program in an organization also has an ample potential to drive the drug abusers away from applying in it. This can be very helpful for small and medium businesses where drug abusers are more likely to apply, as they dont need to invest much of their time and money on such applicants.

Drawbacks of pre-employment drug screens
Though pre-employment drug screening has many advantages, there are some issues associated with it.

The major drawback of drug screening is its sample collection process where job applicants are likely to feel violation of their privacy. This increases the hassle for organizations of handling the screening more sensitively.
Some drugs such as marijuana remain detectable for up to three weeks after their usage. Some other drugs such as cocaine might remain only for few hours after usage. Thus, making a hiring decision based on these results requires much caution as it may affect the career of a job applicant.
There are some possibilities of prescription-drugs affecting the drug-testing results. Organizations discriminating a job applicant based on the prescription drug-abuse could be violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Some latest advances in medical testing have resulted in evolvement of certain drug-screening products, which are easy to monitor, adulteration proof, affordable, and provide instant and reliable results. These enable organizations to conduct pre-employment drug-screening effectively, with a decreased potential of drawbacks.

Employment Discrimination Against Workers’ Rights

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Discourage employers discriminatory actions of its employees to use a lot of work decrees, ratified by the federal and state governments in 1960. These provisions deal with a lot of elements that have a lot of respect workers’ rights and also your personality and work style.

Which was later employment discrimination laws in force, which aims to prevent employers continue their illegal activities, or else face the consequences of being penalized.

Prevailing U.S. federal law, it is highly illegal to discriminate against an employer for its employees because of their employees nationality, sex, race or religion. This applies to employers who have 15 or more employees in their company.

These provisions can be seen in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which also hider employers refuse to hire out an application for unnecessary disciplinary penalties, stop, impede the promotion, harass and pay much lower wages above.

Much more right to consider implementing policies that may have an effect or to promote the level of the difference between its employees. Site for example, it is illegal to impose penalties for non-Christians who do not attend mass monthly offering of the company.

Thus, employers can be punished if he is guilty of doing to their employees these offenses.

a. Discrimination on grounds of age, or Age Discrimination in Employment Act violation (ADEA)

a. Discrimination based on sex

c. Equal pay discrimination and Fair Labor Standards Act violation (Equal Pay Act)

October. Discrimination based on disability or violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)

e. Citizenship or Immigration Reform and Control Act violation

f. Discrimination based on religion

Although the majority of Member States to harmonize different statutes of employment issues, all of which have their own violation of the relevant sanctions and penalties, which may depend on the weight of the case.

That’s why people who believe they have been harassed by their employers to make the necessary legal steps and to provide due process. More so, in order to increase their access to justice, the law gives the right to hire a lawyer to help them achieve their cases victims.

Authorities, is currently home to more than 1.1 million Americans with HIV, the virus believed to cause acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). That the population is growing, as more people become infected and survive through the changing medicines. The epidemic has hit employment hard.

Infection rate is reported that some high-risk populations, such as New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco communities, as high as one in every 25 workers. In addition, recent polls show that even these high estimates are too low.

Age group, more than half of our country’s workers most likely to be infected in the future: adults aged 25 to 44 years of age.

A growing number of employers tried to smooth over real and perceived problems associated with HIV infection and AIDS-infected employee training and adopt a written policy specifically prohibiting discrimination.

Nevertheless, when employers and employees responded to the spread of AIDS with panic and a strong prejudice against working with people who are infected with HIV. Some insurance companies that panic worse by limiting health insurance coverage or significantly increase premiums for those infected.

As mentioned statistics, the victims who acquire professional help qualified and competent labor attorney who has knowledge and experience in handling labor disputes are more likely to get at their money from your employers’ requirements. It may also prevent their employers allow retaliations court proceedings.