A Push to Give Steadier Shifts to Part-Timers

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.nytimes.com

As more workers find their lives upended and their paychecks reduced by ever-changing, on-call schedules, government officials are trying to put limits on the harshest of those scheduling practices. The actions reflect a growing national movement — fueled by women’s and labor groups — to curb practices that affect millions of families, like assigning just one or two days of work a week or requiring employees to work unpredictable hours that wreak havoc with everyday routines like college and child care. The recent, rapid spread of on-call employment to retail and other sectors has prompted proposals that would require companies to pay employees extra for on-call work and to give two weeks’ notice of a work schedule. Vermont and San Francisco have adopted laws giving workers the right to request flexible or predictable schedules to make it easier to take care of children or aging parents. Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller, is pressing the City Council to take up such legislation. And last month, President Obama ordered federal agencies to give the “right to request” to two million federal workers. The new laws and proposals generally require an employer to discuss a new employee’s situation and to consider scheduling requests, but they do not require companies to accommodate individual schedules. Many businesses have opposed these measures, arguing that they represent improper government intrusion into private...

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A Plan B For Healthcare.gov?

Today's post was shared by The Health Care Blog and comes from thehealthcareblog.com

By ROBERT LASZEWSKI It is now becoming clear that the Obama administration will not have Health.care.gov fixed by December 1 so hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, of people will be able to smoothly enroll by January 1. Why do I say that? Look at this from the administration spokesperson’s daily Healthcare.gov progress report on Friday: Essentially what is happening is people [those working on the fixes] are going through the entire process. As we have fixed certain pieces of functionality, like the account creation process, we’re seeing volume go further down the application. We’re identifying new issues that we need to be in a position to troubleshoot. Does that sound like the kind of report you would expect if they were on track to fix this in less than three weeks? Their biggest problem is that they admittedly don’t know what they don’t know. The spokesperson also reiterated the administration intends to have Obamacare’s computer system “functioning smoothly for the vast majority of users” by the end of the month. It’s time for the Obama administration to get real. It takes months to properly test a complex data system like this. Two things are obvious: When they launched on October 1, very little of the testing had been completed. They are now in the midst of that many months long testing and fixing period. It is clear they don’t have a few weeks of work left; they have months of work left. As Senate Finance...

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Obama Selects Health Policy Advocate as Surgeon General

Today's post was shared by RWJF PublicHealth and comes from www.nytimes.com

President Obama nominated Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, an early supporter and grass-roots advocate for the Affordable Care Act, as surgeon general on Thursday. Dr. Murthy, 36, is a founder and the president of Doctors for America, a group that campaigned for the health care law before Congress passed it in 2010 and that was an outgrowth of Doctors for Obama, which worked to help elect the president in 2008. He is a doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an instructor at Harvard Medical School. At a Rose Garden event in October 2009, held as the Senate Finance Committee was set to vote on the legislation, Dr. Murthy said that Mr. Obama “understands that the current system isn’t working for patients, but it’s also not working for doctors.” Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said Thursday in a statement that Dr. Murthy “will be a powerful messenger” on health policy. His nomination is subject to Senate approval. Last year, he was the co-author of an article for The New Republic responding to criticism of the health care law and citing its support among doctors, although it acknowledged qualms among them. “Doctors will support the new law to the extent that it becomes visible in their everyday lives, and make these lives better,” it said. He also has been a leader in H.I.V. prevention and AIDS education in both the United States and India. In 1995, he helped found Visions, a nonprofit AIDS and...

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U.S. Sees Direct Threat in Attack at Kenya Mall

Terrorism is a valid concern in the workplace. Safety in shopping malls may require additional security requirements for malls. In Israel metal-detectors have been used to check patrons entering malls. Today's post was shared by The New York Times and comes from www.nytimes.com

Viewing the deadly siege at a shopping mall in Kenya as a direct threat to its security, the United States is deploying dozens of F.B.I. agents to investigate the wreckage, hoping to glean every piece of information possible to help prevent such a devastating attack from happening again, possibly even on American soil. For years, the F.B.I. has been closely watching the Shabab, the Somali Islamist group that has claimed responsibility for the Nairobi massacre and recruited numerous Americans to fight and die — sometimes as suicide bombers — for its cause. The Shabab has already attacked most of the major actors trying to end the chaos in Somalia — the United Nations, Uganda, aid groups, the Somali government and now Kenya. The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars bankrolling anti-Shabab operations for years, and there is growing fear that the group could turn its sights on American interests more directly, one of the reasons the Obama administration is committing so many resources to the investigation in Kenya. “We are in this fight together,” said Robert F. Godec, the American ambassador to Kenya. “The more we know about the planning that went into this, the way it was conducted, what was used, the people involved, the better we can protect America, too.” Less than a day after the bloody standoff ended, more than 20 F.B.I. agents wearing flak jackets and helmets were combing through the...

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Jenny Yang Sworn In as EEOC Commissioner Bipartisan Federal Agency Now at Full Strength

Jenny R. Yang was sworn in today as Commissioner of the U.S.  Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). Yang was nominated by President Obama on Aug. 2, 2012, and was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on April 25, 2013, to serve a term expiring July 1, 2017.

With her arrival, the EEOC returns to its full complement of five commissioners. Yang joins

ChairJacqueline Berrien and Commissioners Constance Barker, Chai Feldblum and Victoria Lipnic to complete the five-member presidentially appointed bipartisan Commission, filling the position vacated by Stuart Ishimaru.

"I am delighted to welcome Jenny Yang to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission," said EEOC Chair Jacqueline Berrien. "Her expertise in employment discrimination law and experience as a litigator will be great assets to the agency, and I look forward to working with her and my other colleagues on the Commission to promote equal opportunity in the workplace."

Yang was a partner of Cohen, Milstein, Sellers & Toll PLLC. She joined the firm in 2003, and she has represented thousands of employees across the country in numerous complex civil rights and employment actions. As chair of the firm's hiring and diversity committee, Yang has experience with the issues employers confront in making hiring and other personnel decisions.

Prior to joining Cohen Milstein, Yang served as a senior trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, Employment Litigation Section, where she enforced federal laws prohibiting discrimination in employment by state and local government employers from 1998 to 2003. Before that, she worked at the National Employment Law Project to enforce the workplace rights of garment workers. Yang clerked for the Honorable Edmund Ludwig on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.

"It is an incredible honor to serve as a Commissioner of the EEOC," said Commissioner Yang. "It is a privilege to work with so many talented and dedicated colleagues to ensure equal opportunity for all."

Yang previously served for over five years as vice chair and board member of the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center, a nonprofit organization that provides legal assistance to low-income Asian Pacific Americans and small business owners in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.

Yang received her B.A. from Cornell University in government. She received her J.D. from New York University School of Law, where she was a note and comment editor of the law review and a Root-Tilden public interest scholar. Yang and her husband, Kil Huh, director of the States' Fiscal Health Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts, have two sons. She is the daughter The Honorable Sue Yang, Retired NJ Judge of Compensation.

The EEOC enforces federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Further information about the EEOC is available on its website at www.eeoc.gov

Legislation Goes to President Obama on CMS Condition Payment Procedures

The US House (H.R. 1845) and US Senate has passed legislation to modify procedures for processing conditional payments under the Medicare (S. 1718) Secondary Payer Act. It establishes parameters for repording, processing and appealing issues concerning conditional payments.

Under the proposed legislation time periods for reporting by parties to CMS (The Center for Medeicare and Medicaid Services) are eased, penalities for insurance carriers are reduced, and a 3 year statute of limitations is established.

The legislation was merged into another pending bill for medical services and was rushed to a favorable vote in both the House and Senate in the last moments before Christmas.

What remains to be determined are the regulations that will be established to implement the legislation. In the past, such regulations usually set boundries for such legislation and may in the end further complicate and even prolong resolution of the issues.

Read more about "The Medicare Secondary Payer Act" and workers' compensation

Workers' Compensation: US Supreme Court Denies CMS-MSP ...

Oct 01, 2012

US Supreme Court Denies CMS-MSP Case - Hadden. 2012 WL 1106757. Supreme Court of the United States. HADDEN, VERNON V. UNITED STATES. No. 11-1197.Oct. 1, 2012. Opinion. The petition for writ of certiorari is ...

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Workers' Compensation: CMS/MSP Requires Deceased Beneficiary ...

Apr 03, 2009

CMS/MSP Requires Deceased Beneficiary Information. CMS has announced that workers' compensation information concerning deceased beneficiaries must be reported by insurance carriers. "We received another question ...

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Federal Court Enjoins CMS From MSP Recovery Procedures

May 18, 2011

"IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Defendant's demand for payment of her MSP reimbursement claims, under threat of collection actions before there has been a resolution of an appeal regarding the amount of the Defendant's ...

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Workers' Compensation: Seeking a Waiver of CMS/MSP ...

Dec 23, 2008

A formal process exits to obtain a waiver of an Overpayment Recovery request from The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS]. If SSA advises you or your client that it has made an overpayment, ie. Medicare ...

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The President signs the Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I want to thank everybody who is here because they all did outstanding work to help us get this legislation completed.

As you know, I think all Americans feel we have a moral, sacred duty towards our men and women in uniform. They protect our freedom, and it’s our obligation to do right by them. This bill takes another important step in fulfilling that commitment.

I want to thank the members of Congress who helped to make this happen. It is going to have immediate impact. It is going to improve access to health care, streamline services in the VA. It expands support for veterans who are homeless.

There are two parts to the bill, though, that I especially want to highlight. First of all, this bill ends a decade-long struggle for those who serve at Camp Lejeune. Some of the veterans and their families who were based in Camp Lejeune in the years when the water was contaminated will now have access to extended medical care. And, sadly, this act alone will not bring back those we’ve lost, including Jane Ensminger, but it will honor their memory by making a real difference for those who are still suffering.

The second part of this bill that I want to highlight -- prohibit protesting within 300 feet of military funerals during the two hours before and two hours after a service. I supported this step as a senator. I am very pleased to be signing this bill into law. The graves of our veterans are hallowed ground. And obviously we all defend our Constitution and the First Amendment and free speech, but we also believe that when men and women die in the service of their country and are laid to rest, it should be done with the utmost honor and respect.

So I’m glad that Congress passed this bill and I hope that we can continue to do some more good bipartisan work in protecting our veterans. I’ve been advocating, for example, for a veterans job corps that could help provide additional opportunities for the men and women who are coming home as we’re winding down our operations in Afghanistan and having ended the war in Iraq. And so this is a good sign of a bipartisan spirit that I’m sure is going to carry through all the way to Election Day and beyond.

With that, I’m going to sign the bill. Make sure I sign the right place, though.

(The bill is signed.)

There you go. Congratulations, everybody. Good work. Thank you very much.

More about Camp Lejuene

Workers' Compensation: Camp Lejeune Veterans Act

Jul 21, 2012

C.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, announced that the Honoring America's Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act of 2012, H.R. 1627 a bill that improves services and care for ...

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

Workers' Compensation: Camp Lejeune Toxic Exposure

Feb 18, 2010

Newly reported information is now demonstrating that the water at Camp Lejeune NC military base may have been contaminated as a result of a toxic spill. Marines, sailors, their families and other civilian contractors may be ...

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

ATSDR Health Survey of Pre-1986 Personnel at Camp Lejeune

May 28, 2011

During June--December 2011, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry will conduct a health survey of persons who resided or worked at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina before 1986 and ...

http://workers-compensation.blogspot.com/

VA Outlines New Policy to Address Burn Pit Hazards

May 08, 2010

(5) contaminated drinking water at Camp LeJeune, North Carolina; and (6) pollutants from a waste incinerator near the Naval Air Facility (NAF) at Atsugi, Japan. It is imperative that regional office personnel are aware of these ...

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Distracted Driving: Federal Guidelines Proposed For Automakers

After years of accidents in the workplace caused by the use of mobile devices in vehicles, the Federal Government today proposed universal universal guidelines to encourage automobile manufacturers to electronically disable these devices when a vehicle is in operation.  The enforcement of this safety-first proposal may establish a legal standard universally to bar the use of such devices in vehicles and encourage employees to have a safer working environment.

See: U.S. Department of Transportation Proposes ‘Distraction’ Guidelines for Automakers
"Issued by the Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the guidelines would establish specific recommended criteria for electronic devices installed in vehicles at the time they are manufactured that require visual or manual operation by drivers. The announcement of the guidelines comes just days after President Obama’s FY 2013 budget request, which includes $330 million over six years for distracted driving programs that increase awareness of the issue and encourage stakeholders to take action. "

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