Practicing Positive Employee Relations

In CSA’s continuing desire to improve member services, the idea of this desk book was born. This book is intended to provide members' executives and managers with a source of information and guidance in attaining positive employee relations at their individual companies. Use this book as a starting point for auditing, modifying, and developing your own personnel practices and procedures that are best suited for your individual corporate culture. We hope that you use this book as a true "desk book." Keep it handy and refer to it often in managing employees.[1]

This book is available at a member discount of $59. To order, please email your name and shipping address to lisagolden@gocsa.com. We will invoice you for the amount when the order is shipped.

[1] This desk book is intended only as a guide to provide general information on the topics discussed here. It is not intended as legal advice on particular matters. Since many of the issues addressed in this desk book are legal in nature, a review of the specific facts relevant to the particular member company should be made prior to implementation of any of the concepts set forth here. Accordingly, members are strongly advised to consult with counsel concerning the applicability of any of the matters discussed in this desk book to their particular companies and to the particular situation at issue.

Georgia Passes New Law That May Enhance Enforceability of Non-Compete Agreements

From Jackson-Lewis

The Georgia legislature has passed a new law that makes employee restrictive covenants and non-compete agreements easier to enforce. While House Bill 173 has been signed by the governor, it will not go into effect unless the Georgia Constitution is amended in a statewide referendum in the 2010 general election. If implemented, Georgia will transition from a state where such agreements can be difficult to uphold to one where such agreements are regularly enforced, thus joining the majority. Read more.

NLBMDA News - Card Check Negotiations Given New Life By Franken's Arrival

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) was finally sworn in to the U.S. Senate on July 9, giving the Democrats the 60-vote block they need to override procedural hurtles on controversial legislation such as the so-called "Employee Free Choice Act" (H.R.1409/S.560). While several key Democrats continue to hold firm in opposition to the card check legislation as currently written, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) continues to press for support of a "compromise" that will garner enough votes to bring the legislation to the Senate floor before the end of the month. Dealers who are concerned about legislation that undermines the employee-employer bargaining relationship should visit www.BuildtheVote.org to remind your Senators to hold firm in opposition to card check legislation in any form. Source.

NLBMDA News - DHS to Increase I-9 Compliance Efforts; Senate Seeks to Preserve "No Match" Rule

Recently, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency announced that it was increasing its I-9 compliance enforcement efforts. The I-9 form is the eligibility-for-employment form that requires verification of certain documents. At the same time, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that the agency would rescind the controversial Social Security No-Match Rule, which had been blocked by a court order. Read more.

NLBMDA News - Mandatory Paid Sick Leave Legislation Introduced

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) have introduced the Healthy Families Act (H.R. 2460/S. 1152) which will set a standard for mandatory paid sick leave for all employees. The bill would require an employer to provide each employee with no less than 1 hour of accrued sick time for every 30 hours worked up to a total of 56 hours of paid sick time in a calendar year. Read more.

News You Can Use - Running Your Business

Feds Target Employers of Undocumented Workers
Builders must be able to verify that they and their subs meet immigration and hiring statutes
Source: BUILDER OnlinePublication date: June 15, 2009
By John Caulfield
Last week, Michael Sivage Homes and Communities was putting the final touches on new language in its contracts that include requirements that the builder's contractors and their workers comply with current immigration and hiring laws. Read more.

Liens on Properties and Funds are Two Different Things
By Jennifer Wolfe on June 12th, 2009
Liens are one of the most powerful collection tools available to workers in the construction industry. Mechanics Liens are inexpensive and hard-hitting, and perhaps one of the most effective ways to collect on non-paying projects. A properly filed construction lien can affect a property’s title, entangles multiple parties to your dispute, and helps get you paid. Suppliers, prime/sub/sub-sub contractors and laborers all have the rights to lien a property they performed work on.

Dealers confront healthcare costs
(Jun. 12) When a panel of high-performance retailers was asked: "How are you handling health care?" the audience of Do it Best dealers was paying close attention.

Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and Health Reimbursement Accounts (HRA) were among the healthcare insurance tools used by high performance retailers who participated in a panel discussion during the Do it Best May Market.

About halfway through the nearly two-hour discussion, titled "Extreme Retailing: Taking it to the next level," someone in the audience posed the question: "How are you guys handling health care?"

One of the most innovative answers came from Kyle Walters, president of Elliott's Hardware, a three-location hardware store retailer based in Dallas. "People are really key for us, and health care is always a challenge," Walters said. Read more.

HUD and CDC Push Healthy Homes Agenda
HUD deputy secretary Sims: "Our homes ought to be a place where we can raise our children without fear of making them sick."
Source: BUILDER OnlinePublication date: June 10, 2009
By Jenny Sullivan

Healthier homes can produce healthier Americans and a healthier U.S. economy.

That was the message in Washington Tuesday, where officials from the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) laid out some of the ways housing can affect public health, challenging the nation's builders, healthcare providers, community organizers, and citizens to play a more proactive role in reducing preventable diseases and accidents in the home. Read more.

NLBMDA News - Card Check Proponents Increasing Pressure

Press reports continue to indicate that Senators Arlen Specter (D-PA) and Tom Harkin (D-IA) are making headway in discussions to seek an alternative version of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) that can pass the Senate. It is expected that a vote will be called in the Senate within 48 hours of a court issuing a final decision in the contested Minnesota Senate race, possibly within the next 60 days. It is important to note that the discussions are taking place only among liberal Democratic Senators and labor officials, and no outreach has been made to the business community. Moreover, the head of the AFL-CIO has stated that any "compromise" will maintain the original intent of EFCA; in other words, there is no such thing as a compromise. Dealers in Louisiana, Nebraska, Virginia and Arkansas should continue to contact Senators Landrieu, Ben Nelson, Warner, Webb, Pryor and Lincoln to encourage them to hold firm in opposition to this fundamentally-flawed bill and any so-called alternatives. (Visit http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?et=1102608282728&s=1144&e=0018h6RjXcQ7B8Irv4CfaOOprcSiChpIS3kbeSy1oO5X93vF_HCxqQXE3oQHrAMV7NxCBGd-8xpV2HbSAHc1mIK4Qm34JrYIr1HIYxg9xGwF_0hTaEg8LEK8w== to send email or fax messages.) Original source.

NLBMDA News - Homeland Security Announces New Immigration "Worksite Enforcement Strategy"

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has announced a new "Worksite Enforcement Strategy" in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents will be targeting for criminal prosecution those employers who "knowingly hire illegal workers."

Further, ICE agents will also be looking for "evidence of the mistreatment of workers, along with evidence of trafficking, smuggling, harboring, visa fraud, identification document fraud, money laundering and other criminal conduct." The announcement goes on to state that ICE offices will obtain indictments, criminal arrest or search warrants or a commitment from a U.S. Attorney's Office to prosecute the targeted employer before arresting employees for civil immigration violations at a worksite.

The complete announcement can be found on the NLBMDA website at http://www.dealer.org/.

NLBMDA News - Specter Floats Card Check "Compromises"

As expected, Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) has proposed several so-called "compromise" ideas to overcome the challenge of securing the necessary 60 votes to advance card check legislation in the Senate. One Specter proposal would allow mail-in union authorization cards, which theoretically protect workers' privacy in making their decision. In reality, the NLRB has already expressed concerns about the potential for interference and lower participation rates by potential voters than in secret ballot elections.

Specter's second proposal would include "last best offer" arbitration, in which arbitrators would impose contracts after comparing the employer's offer to other union contracts, not to nonunion counterparts. Dealers in Pennsylvania are encouraged to contact Sen. Specter ASAP to let him know that neither suggestion offers reasonable protection to workers and employers. Visit Build the Vote to send an email or print a letter to fax on your company letterhead.

Hiring Well is Key to Growing Business

By Jim Moody, CAE
CSA President and CEO

Last week I mentioned the importance of hiring well and gave a pretty egregious example of hiring gone wrong. Today, I’d like to shift gears and talk about what it means to hire well.

I’m not talking about the basic HR functions. Things like ensuring you ask only legal questions in the interview, following through with drug tests and background checks, getting them to sign the employee handbook and the like are all important aspects of hiring. The truth is, however, that this is the easy part. You can be compliant and still preside over a band of idiots (and I say that in the nicest possible way). How much thought have you put into ensuring that your staff is as focused as you are on making the business successful?

I recently had an opportunity to listen to Jim Collins talk about “the people issue.” Collins wrote “Built to Last” and “Good to Great” out of research that he and his students at the University of Colorado conducted. Unlike many books written by business professors, these are very readable. I encourage you to read them or at least read the summaries .

Here are some of the points I heard him make that I thought really applied to hiring and managing employees in our industry.

- Hire clock makers, not time-tellers.
- Work is infinite but time is finite. Make sure your folks are know how to determine the important things.
- A great organization is likely to die from indigestion caused by too much opportunity rather than from starvation of too few ideas. It is far better to be great at our foundational tasks than to be always chasing something new.
- First who, then what. Building and developing the right people are the keys to business success. If you are the only person who can “think,” then the business is limited to how hard you can work. Even the greatest workaholic only has 24 hours in the day.
- Turbulence is your friend. It exposes strengths and weaknesses. Success during turbulent times is directly related to your actions in prior good times. (It’s a little late to do anything about this one now, but it’s an important point to keep in mind when times are good again.)
- Those who do better in unpredictable times aren’t better at predicting. They realize they can’t possibly predict uncertainty. The best way to prepare is to have the right people on your team. Companies that went from great to good to bad to irrelevant to dead had one thing in common: a high percentage of key seats in the company held by ineffective people.
- People either share your core values or they don’t. They can’t be taught. Someone with a poor work ethic may be able to hide it for awhile, but eventually it comes out. A corner-cutter is always a corner-cutter.
- The “right” people do not need to be tightly managed. That’s not to say that they don’t need to be trained or mentored. But, with good instructions and training, the “right” people will do the job better without being micromanaged. If you are a micro-manager because you feel that you have no other choice, you’ve made poor hiring decisions.
- “Right” people don’t have a job; they have responsibilities. For them, job descriptions are somewhat irrelevant. They understand the concept of doing whatever it takes, and you don’t have to explain it to them.
- The “right” people have only one response to a commitment: fulfillment. They carry through on what they say they will do without you harping on it.
- The “right” people have a passion for your business. You can’t create that in them. You might motivate them with a reward for awhile, but you can’t create passion. It’s intrinsic.

Do you have the “right” people in your key seats today? If not, what are you going to do to get the right people there? When it’s time to hire again, how can your interviews help you discern who is “right” and who is not?

I know that it’s easy for me to talk about this when I don’t have to walk a mile in your shoes. I don’t know what it’s like to have sales drop by 75%. I don’t know what it’s like to hire manual laborers at minimum wage. I don’t know what it’s like to have employees not show up for work on Monday because they are drunk, high or in jail. All that’s true. But what I do know is that we all want our businesses to thrive. We want them to be better next year than they are today. And when we once again are setting records for sales, we’ll still have goals for the company to do better.

And I know this: there has never been a better opportunity to re-make your company. And if you don’t put thought into it right now, you will find yourself with exactly the same company next year and the next. I encourage you to visit http://www.jimcollins.com/ for more on the importance of finding the right people, how to be a better leader (which is, in turn, more attractive to better employees), and how to take your company from good to great. The resources on that site are free.

From NLBMDA Legislative Affairs Federal

NLBMDA Participates in Congressional Health Care Roundtable

With health care reform the next priority on the new Administration's "to do" list, debate is heating up on Capitol Hill. Half a dozen hearings have been held in the committees of jurisdiction over various aspects of the plan, and NLBMDA Director of Government Affairs Colleen Levine participated in a House Small Business Committee Democratic Roundtable on health care reform last week. Levine and other participants, including representatives from the National Retail Federation, National Association of Realtors, National Roofing Contractors Association and other industry and medical organizations, urged support for market-based reforms that increase competition and lower costs without imposing costly mandates on already struggling business owners. Read more.

Federal Budget Outline Passes Congress without Estate Tax Relief

The final House-Senate compromise on the FY2010 budget resolution passed last week on a largely party-line vote. Unfortunately, the Lincoln-Kyl estate tax relief included in the Senate-passed version was stripped from the final bill. Read more.

Specter Switch Encourages Card Check Supporters

While Sen. Arlen Specter's dramatic move to the Democratic party was coupled with a pledge to continue to oppose the Employee Free Choice Act, the switch gave new life to compromise efforts as labor continues to press for the 60 votes they need in the Senate. Read more.

Mortgage Cramdown Bill Defeated

A scaled-down mortgage "cramdown" amendment by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) to a housing finance bill, which would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify certain mortgages on primary residences issued prior to Jan. 1, 2009, failed in the Senate last week by a vote of 45 to 51. Read more.

Position Available: Crack Heads and Felons Please Apply

Jim Moody
CSA President

One of the many enjoyable aspects of my job is serving as the head of our self-insured worker’s compensation fund. But this week, my enthusiasm has been sapped by a settlement mediation for a claim that should never have happened.

Back when things were blowing and going, one of our member companies hired a fellow without really putting too much thought into it. No interview with senior leadership. No background check. Just needed a warm body to do manual labor, and that’s exactly what they got.

Unfortunately, the new employee had some baggage. He was a three-time convicted felon. He had been a crack user for four years. He had two previous back injuries resulting in worker’s comp settlements. He failed two grades in school and never went beyond 9th grade. By his own admission, he was illiterate. Not long after he was hired (surprise, surprise), he injured his back.

The amount we’ve paid for that claim is significant, as is the settlement, but the amount is not the important issue here. What’s important is that this claim was set in stone the moment this fellow was hired. The negligence wasn’t on his part for getting injured; it was on the dealer for hiring him in the first place. How useful could this fellow have been as an employee? Did the owner really get a full day’s work for a full day’s pay? How did he affect morale on the yard? What kind of danger did he pose to other workers or the facility itself?

Admittedly, this is an extreme example (though it is no exaggeration). But I really worry about how this industry is going to hire people when the good times return. Many of you (perhaps all of you!) have spent the past year or so paring down your payroll. It’s my impression that you used the opportunity to jettison those who were slackers, unsafe workers, and generally poor employees. You’ve also lost many good folks, but the bad ones are long gone. We might say most of you have a clean slate.

I’ve had some people tell me that there are masses waiting in the wings to come back into the building supply business. I wonder if that’s really the case. The longer we go without a housing recovery (and let’s be honest, while the economy is probably going to start recovering in 2009, we aren’t going to see appreciable increases in new home starts until 2010), the more our best experienced workers get assimilated into other sectors of the economy. I fear that all the good ones have jobs and only the bad ones are ready to come back when you have jobs for them.

As a leader in your business, now is the time to think about how you will hire when new positions are available again. Just as important as the hiring is the orientation, where you have the opportunity to educate the employee about his job and the industry, give him his first taste of corporate culture, and indoctrinate him on safety.

Most of us spend far too little time thinking about these things because we are too busy. Yet, few things are more important in setting us up for success or failure.

I recently attended a seminar with Jim Collins, author of “Good to Great” and “Built to Last.” I’ve written about him before and urge you to read his books. Next week, I’ll discuss some of the things I heard Collins say as it relates to hiring.

From NLBMDA: New COBRA Requirements Take Effect

From the National Lumber and Building Materials Dealer Association

The recent stimulus legislation contained some important changes to COBRA health care coverage originally passed in 1986. COBRA provides certain former employees, retirees, spouses, former spouses, and dependent children the right to temporary continuation of health coverage at group rates by paying their employer the premium plus some administrative costs. Group health plans for employers with 20 or more employees on more than 50 percent of its typical business days in the previous calendar year are subject to COBRA, although some states have COBRA-like requirements too with different thresholds. The new law includes an enhancement - a temporary 65 percent subsidy for COBRA premium payments for nine months.

It has a quirky delivery method for the subsidy. The employee would pay the employer the lowered 35 percent of premium. Employers would take a credit against their payroll taxes for the amount of the subsidy. No additional federal money changes hands (unless the total subsidies exceed the employer's payroll taxes) between the former employee, employer, and the government. There are also new notice requirements that must be given to eligible employees who qualify under the new provisions. The Department of Labor has established a website with employer guidance, FAQs and sample notices.