Thanks to Oak-Leyden Developmental Services for electing me to their board of directors this past month.

Oak-Leyden was founded in 1956 to service the Oak Park & Leyden Township communities in west suburban Chicago. People with developmental disabilities learn the skills needed to live as independently as possible. We offer community living services, job training & child developmental services.

On Monday, 8/15/16, I was quoted in Joe Concha’s article for The Hill, “NY Post Asks, Will Bill Clinton be Allowed Female Interns?” On 8/11/16, I was quoted in Insureon’s  article “Why LLCs Need Liability Insurance as Much as Sole Proprietors.” And finally, I was quoted in Fingercheck.com’s 8/8/16 article by Katherine Muniz, “Do I Have to Pay for Holidays?” All 3 articles, with my contributions in red, are below.

NY Post asks, will Bill Clinton be allowed female interns?

By Joe Concha – 08/15/16 05:12 PM EDT

The New York Post has posed a provocative question about Hillary Clinton: Will she as president allow Bill Clinton to have female interns?

The former president, whose affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky led to his impeachment, would serve as first gentleman in a Hillary Clinton administration as well as possibly the head of her economic policy team.

The New York tabloid, a frequent critic of the Clintons known for its sensational stories, published a story on Monday with the headline: “If elected, will Hillary let Bill have female interns again?”“Bill Clinton sabotaged his second term as president when it was revealed he had a sordid sexual affair with then-White House intern Monica Lewinsky,” writes the Post’s Carl Campanile. “The House of Representatives even voted to impeach Clinton over what came to be known as Monicagate.”

The Post does speak to some legitimate sources once close to the Clintons in the ’90s, including Hank Sheinkopf, who was part of Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign, as part of its story.

“Twenty years after Lewinsky, there are some people who won’t want him around interns,” said Sheinkopf. “If Hillary becomes president, there will have to be guidelines for the internship program to make people feel comfortable.”

Still, even if the White House didn’t want the former president to have female interns, it would likely be illegal to do so, according to legal experts who spoke to The Hill.

“If Bill Clinton, as First Spouse, ‘was not permitted’ to hire female interns, that would be sex discrimination,” explains Ann Juliano, law professor at Charles Widger School of Law at Villanova University. “A federal statute known as Title VII prohibits discrimination because of sex.”

Juliano noted that exceptions can be made, but not in this particular case.

“There is a very narrow exception that allows for hiring only one sex or religion or national origin, but ‘because you had inappropriate relations in the past with female interns’ just doesn’t quite support a sex-based restriction.”

Charles A. Krugel, human resources attorney and counselor on labor and employment law on behalf of business, agrees.

“It’s illegal gender discrimination if there’s an attempt to limit who could be hired as Bill Clinton’s interns, on the basis of gender, should Hillary Clinton win in November,” Krugel says.

“In order to discriminate on the basis of gender, the Clintons would have to prove that Bill suffers from a diagnosed sexual disorder that requires he can’t work around females or female interns.”

Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice after an affair with Lewinsky went public. A two-thirds vote to have Clinton removed from office could not be achieved in the Senate, however.

The Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch, the executive chairman of 21st Century Fox.

Updated at 7:01 p.m.

New York Post, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton

Why LLCs Need Liability Insurance as Much as Sole Proprietors

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Categories: Errors and Omissions Insurance

Being a sole proprietor has plenty of perks:

  • To launch your business, you just need to start working – no need to file startup paperwork.
  • Tax time is easier because you pay taxes as an individual, not a corporation.
  • There’s no one to boss you around.

But it’s not all roses. If you’re a sole proprietor, there is no legal divide separating your personal assets from those of your business. If you’re sued, that can spell trouble.

That’s why many sole proprietors opt to incorporate as a limited liability company (LLC). But no matter which business structure you choose, you can still benefit from new business insurance.

How Vulnerable Are Sole Proprietors to Liability?

If you’re a sole proprietor and your business is on the losing end of a big lawsuit, you could lose your business’ money and property and your own, too. Sole proprietor insurance can help make sure you have the funds to cover your business debts so your personal assets aren’t in jeopardy.

“Sole proprietors are very exposed to personal liability. Anything that their business is liable for, the sole proprietor is equally liable for,” says Charles Krugel, a a management-side labor and employment lawyer and HR counselor who has his own practice in Chicago. “Consequently, it makes sense for sole proprietors to purchase liability insurance, such as Errors & Omissions Insurance, Employment Practices Liability Insurance, or other sorts of business insurance.”

You may not be legally required to purchase sole proprietorship insurance, but you definitely up your risk exposure by not doing so.

How LLCs Help Business Owners Manage Risk

LLCs require more paperwork upfront than a sole proprietorship and will add a degree of difficulty to your taxes. But one big advantage? An LLC creates a divide between your personal assets and your business’s. This means that even if you face a lawsuit, your personal assets should be safe.

“In theory, the individual who is the owner of the LLC can avoid having the liabilities of the business attached to their home, their bank accounts, their retirement accounts, and other assets they may hold personally,” saysPhilip Crowley (@PhilipPCrowley), founder and owner of the Law Office of Philip P. Crowley LLC, where he focuses on helping biomedical and IT companies.

For that reason, some LLC owners may think they don’t need liability insurance. But while an LLC does offer some protection to business owners, it’s not magic.

“An LLC is intended to shield an owner’s personal assets from the corporation’s liabilities,” says Krugel. “But this protection isn’t absolute.”

Your LLC can still be sued and be liable for huge sums of money, which is why it’s still smart to carry liability insurance policies such as General Liability Insurance and Errors and Omissions Insurance.

What Can Happen if Your LLC Doesn’t Have Liability Insurance

Basically, if you don’t have any type of liability insurance for your LLC, your business has to find a way to cover lawsuit costs on its own.

Take this example: You own a website design company and are hired to design a website for a birdbath business. You and your client both sign a contract spelling out the scope of the work.

After a few weeks, your client demands multiple changes – they now want animation of birds doing the backstroke. You say you would be happy to make the changes, but for an additional fee. Your client refuses to pay any additional costs and tells you to just “figure it out.”

After delivering the website as originally agreed upon, the client sues you, claiming you didn’t give them the website they paid for (even though you totally did).

The aftermath: Even if you didn’t do anything wrong, you could still spend thousands of dollars of your business’ money defending your business against your birdbrained client. Unless your LLC has deep pockets, the ordeal could be financially ruinous.

“Without the resources to defend that case, the owner of the LLC is exposed to potential judgments or invading their business assets in order to pay for the defense,” says Crowley. “So it’s really important to have some reasonable level of insurance.”

In this case, if you purchased Errors and Omissions Insurance, your insurer may assign you an attorney to defend your LLC against the lawsuit and help pay for the legal fees.

“The benefit of having E&O coverage in place is that the insurer is then responsible for defending the suit, and the proprietor of the business doesn’t have to worry about spending their own assets to go out, find an attorney, pay the attorney, and deal with any settlement that may be made,” says Crowley.

What Other Type of Liability Insurance May Benefit My LLC?

In addition to E&O, Crowley recommends a few more policies to small IT businesses.

“Another form of insurance that small IT companies probably should consider is General Liability Insurance, which provides for the basic liability that can arise from negligence,” says Crowley. “Depending upon the nature of the services provided, it may be useful to also explore Cyber Liability Insurance. Many states now have fairly onerous notification requirements in the case of a breach of security, and the costs of notifying all of those people can be considerable.”

For more information, check out our article “Technology Errors and Omissions vs. General Liability Insurance” to see if either coverage might be right for your business.

About the Contributors

Philip Crowley is a lawyer focused on helping growing biomedical and IT companies – and the consultants who serve them – to avoid costly legal errors and reach the next level of success. He has more than 40 years of legal experience, including more than 30 years in the law department of Johnson & Johnson. Crowley is admitted to practice in New Jersey and New York.

 

 

 

Charles Krugel represents small- to medium-sized businesses and nonprofits around the country. His labor, employment law, and human resources counseling practice focuses equally on proaction, prevention, negotiation, and litigation. He has 20 years of experience in the field, a Master of Arts in industrial / organizational psychology, and has worked in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

 

 

Do I Have to Pay for Holidays?

by , August 8, 2016

An employee holding a sparkler and the United States flag in celebration of paid time off. When it comes to holiday time off, it seems like the rumor mill never stops spinning. Depending on who you ask, you’ll get different intel. “For federal holidays we get time off,” one colleague might say. “But do we get paid?” another asks. That same source might reply “Yes and I think it’s overtime.” But what’s the truth? Here are the facts according to the law.

Which holidays do employees have off?

None, technically! Federal law does not require private employers to provide employees with time off on holidays (even federally recognized holidays), whether it be Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s. The law views holidays as regular workdays, but many employers provide holiday time off as an employee benefit in order to improve morale and maintain a competitive company culture.

How is holiday time off paid?

According to the Department of Labor, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) does not require payment for time not worked, including vacations and holidays. The FLSA comments, “These benefits are generally a matter of agreement between an employer and an employee (or the employee’s representative).” Translation: employers are not required to pay for time off on holidays.

Do employees who work on holidays earn overtime?

There is no law that says employees must be paid extra for working on a holiday. In practice, some employer do provide overtime pay as an employee benefit. However, according to the FLSA’s overtime stipulations, “The FLSA does not require overtime pay for work on weekends, holidays, or regular days of rest, unless overtime is worked on such days.”

Employment contracts

If paid time off has been established in an employee agreement, it must be upheld. On another note, if an employer has made such a policy, it is recommended that they apply the policy to all employees of the same classification in order to avoid a potential discrimination lawsuit.

Legal holidays for government employees

Public sector employees are designated 10 legal and paid holidays under federal law in Title 5 of the United States Code (USC). These holidays include:

  • New Year’s Day
  • Martin Luther King Day
  • President’s Day
  • Memorial Day
  • Independence Day
  • Labor Day
  • Columbus Day
  • Veteran’s Day
  • Thanksgiving Day
  • Christmas Day

The McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act and Davis-Bacon Act also grants holiday privileges to employees working on government contracts.

Management-Side Labor and Employment Lawyer & HR Counselor Charles Krugel says, “These laws relate to federal public sector contractors who are mandated to pay prevailing wage rates pursuant to a federal government contract. In other words, these are federal laws that regulate how much federal contractors & subcontractors, & their employees, are paid (including overtime) & what benefits they receive.”

Contractors working on contracts over $2,500 of certain status may receive holidays and fringe benefits.

State holidays

State and local laws do play a factor in designating time off, and often provide more generous provisions than the Federal version. Take for instance this state statute in New Hampshire mandating that “No employee should be required to work in any mill or factory on any legal holiday” except to the extent it “is both absolutely necessary and can lawfully be performed on the Lord’s Day” (RSA 275:28).

Religious holidays

According to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers with 15 or more companies are obligated to provide reasonable accommodation for the religious practices of its employees. Covered employers must make accomodations unless they can prove that the accommodation would result in undue hardship for its business. Some state anti-discrimination laws may cover even smaller employers.

Floating holidays

As a solution, many employers have adopted the practice of offering floating holidays, which employees can use to take time off for religious observances throughout the year. Once sector that utilizes floating holidays in particular is retail, knowing the importance of holidays for their business, and offering employees time off on other days to make up for the time spent working on holidays.

While federal law does not order holidays off, paid or unpaid, most employers know the importance of offering time off to employees on major holidays in order to stabilize employee morale. Do you believe in celebrating holidays by offering your employees time off?