Pre Employment Screening Articles

The federal labor ombudsman for the Northern Marianas warned employers yesterday that they could be sued for lacking a policy addressing domestic violence in the workplace.

Ombudsman Jim Benedetto advised human resource managers to establish a program assisting employees who are victims of domestic violence and to adopt a policy toward workplace violence.

Benedetto was the guest speaker at the Society of Human Resource Management meeting at the Hyatt Regency Saipan yesterday.

In his presentation, he said that domestic violence is not only a family issue, but a workplace problem as well. “Although domestic violence acts at the worksite are infrequent, they can be serious and can potentially involve others,” he said.

According to Benedetto, 75 percent of domestic violence victims face harassment by intimate partners while at work.

He added that domestic violence affects company productivity by causing victims emotional problems and more time off from work. It also increases health care and health insurance costs.

Furthermore, employers may be liable for domestic violence acts in the workplace.

“Workplace violence litigation has dramatically increased under intentional tort and various negligence theories,” Benedetto said, citing several cases where employers were ordered to pay violence victims or their families for failing to provide adequate security in the workplace.

Various statutes may also expose a company to legal liability, Benedetto said. These include occupational safety and health laws requiring a safe workplace; laws protecting employees who have become disabled as a result of domestic violence; family or medical leave laws requiring employers to grant leave for health conditions related to domestic violence; victim assistance laws prohibiting employers from taking adverse action against a worker who takes time off to deal with domestic violence issues; and anti-discrimination laws requiring equal treatment for domestic violence victims by employers and insurers.

To avoid company liability, Benedetto said, employers should develop a policy promoting programs that increase awareness of domestic violence and sources of assistance.

Since lack of financial resources is often cited as the primary reason victims stay with their abuser, such policy should also provide options to prevent loss of wages when domestic violence causes absence from work.

Benedetto urged employers to allow workers who leave abusers to make changes in benefits at any time to prevent the abuser’s access the victim’s bank account or the new address or location of health care providers, for instance.

A workplace safety plan specific to domestic violence is also essential; so is the employer’s cooperation in enforcement of restraining orders that protect victims, he said.

Benedetto said employers should make every reasonable accommodation to employees who experience performance difficulties due to domestic violence.

Source: SAIPANTRIBUNE.COM

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The following was released today by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence:

Your co-worker is acting strangely again, and the NRA wants him to have his gun close by.

It was only a matter of time. The National Rifle Association thinks every employer in America should be required by law to allow workers to bring guns into the workplace, and the group’s leader announced this week it will work to get state laws passed to ensure it. It doesn’t matter if there are day care centers in the office, or hazardous materials: Workers, the group says, should have a Constitutional right to be armed. And they’ve added a boycott campaign of one business that has argued in court in the state of Oklahoma that it should have the right to ban firearms from the workplace.

“Is there no end to this?” asked Michael D. Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “In state after state, the NRA has lobbied for the right to bring hidden, loaded handguns into churches, schools and bars — and now even chemical plants. Is there any place in America where we shouldn’t allow firearms?”

Specifically, the NRA has targeted petroleum company ConocoPhillips. A press release says the NRA will “spare no effort or expense … Across the country, we’re going to make ConocoPhillips the example of what happens when a corporation takes away your Second Amendment rights,” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said.

Is a company that prohibits guns in the workplace anti-gun? That’s ridiculous. Companies bar guns from the workplace to protect the safety of workers and customers, to keep control over the security of their premises, and to prohibit behavior by potentially dangerous employees who threaten or intimidate other employees.

“America has seen terrible, deadly incidents arise when disturbed individuals bring guns into the office,” Barnes said. “It is simply common sense that when a manager is faced with a situation where a troubled individual is showing the warning signs of danger, that manager should have the right, on private property, to make it clear that the firearms should be left home. The NRA says this is about individual rights, and we agree: It’s about the individual rights of the majority of the individuals at work to have some level of assurance that they won’t be shot.”

Summaries of a few of the many incidents of workplace violence involving firearms follow.

– At a Lockheed Martin assembly plant in Meridian, Miss. on July 9, 2003, “a white factory worker described as a menacing racist went on a murderous rampage, shooting four blacks and one white dead before killing himself. Dozens of employees at the aircraft parts plant frantically ran for cover after the gunman, dressed in a black T-shirt and camouflage pants, opened fire with a shotgun and a semi-automatic rifle during a morning break.” Nine others were injured, including one critically, in the United States’ deadliest workplace shooting in 2 1/2 years. “Authorities identified the shooter as Doug Williams, a man some employees described as a ‘racist’ who didn’t like blacks. ‘When I first heard about it, he was the first thing that came to my mind,’ said Jim Payton, a retired plant employee who worked with Williams for about a year. He said Williams had talked about wanting to kill people. ‘I’m capable of doing it,’ Payton quoted Williams as saying.” (Quoted material from the Associated Press.)

– In Kansas City in July of last year, a 21-year-old worker at a meatpacking plant killed five people and wounded two others before killing himself. “Elijah Brown’s co-workers always had a hard time making sense of him,” MSNBC reported. “He paced, he talked to himself, he got bothered over teasing that wouldn’t faze other people … Police did not offer a motive for Friday’s 10-minute rampage, but said there appeared to be nothing random about the killings at the Kansas City, Kan., ConAgra Foods Inc. plant. They said he passed by some co-workers, telling them, ‘You haven’t done anything to me, so you can go.’ ‘This person acted with purpose, he knew exactly what he was doing,’ Police Chief Ron Miller said.”

– In July 2003, a Jefferson City, Mo., factory worker “was close to being fired for missing work too much before he pulled a gun in the middle of the plant floor and killed three co-workers, authorities said. Jonathon Russell, 25, later committed suicide in a gun battle with police outside the police station, investigators said. Investigators said he may have targeted certain people in the rampage, which followed a shift change at the industrial-radiator factory late Tuesday. Police said Russell had been accumulating work demerits stemming from his absences at Modine Manufacturing Co. and was facing the possible breakup of a romantic relationship. Two co-workers died along the manufacturing line where Russell had worked for two years. A supervisor, shot 50 feet away, died on the way to the hospital. Five other employees were wounded; their conditions ranged from good to critical.”

Source: http://press.arrivenet.com/pol/article.php/677409.html

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