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When the federal minimum wage increased from $6.55 per hour to $7.25 on July 24, 2009, most employers in South Carolina were affected.

South Carolina doesn’t have a state minimum wage. In fact, if a South Carolina employee is not eligible for the federal minimum wage, he or she can legally be paid a mere $1.00 per hour or less. Due to use of the Internet and credit cards, though, most employees in South Carolina are entitled to the federal minimum wage.

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 is the relevant law for the federal minimum wage. This law applies to employers with annual revenue of $500,000 or more and to employers engaged in interstate commerce.

Interstate commerce is defined as any business that takes place across state lines. The Internet, email, answering out -of-state phone calls, shipping packages to other states all qualify as interstate commerce, so most employers in South Carolina and throughout the US (more…)

Under the new South Carolina Immigration law, employers must take a number of measures to ensure that the employees they are hiring may legally work in the U.S.

These steps include:

• Complying with all federal I-9 requirements
• Verifying the legal status of employees

The state recommends that employers use E-Verify, a free federal program, to verify the employee’s identity online in a few minutes.

This law goes into effect on July 1, 2009 for private employers with 100 or more employees. Private employers with fewer than 100 employees have until July 1, 2010 to comply.

E-Verify is a program available through the Department of Homeland Security. It detects fraudulent documents by comparing the employee’s information, including date of birth, social security number and gender, with a nationwide database and social security records and immigration documents.

A new feature of E-Verify will also permit the system to compare the photos on immigration documents with those in the DHS records. This will make it more difficult for an employee to counterfeit immigration documents such as green cards.

According to the South Carolina Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, employers can also verify identity by making sure that the employee has a South Carolina driver’s license or I.D. card. A driver’s license or I.D. card from another state with requirements as strict as those in South Carolina is also acceptable. The South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles has determined that drivers’ licenses or identification cards issued by Alaska, Arizona, (more…)

The new South Carolina Illegal Immigration Reform Act requires employers to verify the legal status of new employees.

One way to comply with this law is to use E-verify from the Department of Homeland Security. The E-verify database combines records from the Social Security Administration, immigration records and other federal agencies to eliminate identity theft. It also prevents employers from breaking the law by employing undocumented workers.

The state suggests that another way to comply with the law is to establish whether the employee has a South Carolina driver’s license or other government issued identity document. Employers are warned that in some cases, employers who refuse to hire legal immigrants, discriminate against Hispanic workers, or try to specify which forms of id they will accept from the list of acceptable documents on the I-9, may be in violation of federal law. It is not clear yet (more…)

Every South Carolina employer needs to be aware of the possibility of violence in the workplace. Although OSHA reports that homicide in the workplace is decreasing, tragically, violence is still one of the top cause of work-related fatalities. It is second only to work-related auto and highway accidents.

Every South Carolina employer must have a plan in place to prevent violence, and to address it if it occurs.

In October of 2007, a gunman shot broke into a downtown Alexandria, Louisiana law office and shot 5 people, killing two of them. Police responded to the scene, but were held at bay by the gunman for 10 hours. Finally, the police entered the building via the use of explosives. In the ensuing shoot-out between police and the gunman, the gunman was killed.

Several more incidents of violence in the workplace have occurred since the beginning of 2008.

On Valentine’s Day, (February 14,) a former graduate student burst into a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University (NIU) in DeKalb, Illinois and began a shooting spree, wounding 16 and killing 6. The spree ended when the student turned the gun on himself.

The student, Steven Kazmierczak, was described by professors as calm and committed. Police reports stated that Kazmierczak had stopped taking his medications three weeks prior to the shooting and was behaving erratically. Kazmierczak’s girl friend, Jessica Baty, disagreed, claiming Steven wasn’t unduly stressed and had purchased the guns only for security.

A week earlier on February 7, an armed political activist burst into the Kirkwood, Missouri city council meeting and opened fire. Three city officials and two police officers were killed. The mayor of Kirkwood was injured but survived. Apparently the gunman had been tossed of out city council meetings twice before.

On February 2, in Tinley Park, Illinois (a Chicago suburb) a gunman posed as a delivery man in an attempt to rob a Lane Bryant store. Six women were in the store. The gunman bound them with duct tape in a back room, but the store manager managed to call 911. The gunman discovered the call, was enraged and shot all 6 women, killing 5.

These incidents ended in tragedy, emphasizing the need for employers to establish safety protocols against violence on the job. All companies should establish an emergency plan which includes training for supervisors and workers on how to respond to violence, and on what steps to take to help prevent acts of violence at work. South Carolina More Workplace Violence 2

The massacre at Virginia Tech was the worst case of workplace violence in 2007.

It was not the only incident, however, and tragic episodes in Illinois and Missouri are simply the most recent cases of violence in the workplace.

Several other episodes led to tragedy or near-tragedy in 2007.

At an Orlando Denny’s during Labor Day weekend of 2007, a 40-year-old waitress was stabbed to death by her estranged husband. Several families who had recently left Walt Disney World saw the attack at the restaurant on International Drive. Coworkers and customers both pursued the attacker, who fled on foot and escaped over a fence, leaving behind one of his shoes. Paramedics tried to save the waitress, but she died of her wounds.

A tragic event in September on the campus of Delaware State University left two students shot dead. Dover, Delaware police interviewed a student following the early morning shooting outside a college dining hall. University officials put the school on lockdown, and the campus’s roughly 1,700 students were confined to their dormitories. Word of the incident and the lockdown went out on cell phones. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as other law enforcement agencies, assisted local police in the search.

At the University of Wisconsin Madison, police hunted for an apparently suicidal man who threatened to explode a bomb at a local hospital and fired off some shots near it. The bomb threat was a fake, police said, adding that the man was a case of attempted “suicide by cop.” He had apparently hoped to provoke a shoot-out with police in which he would have been killed, officers said.

At Virginia Tech 32 students and staff were killed and 17 injured in the year’s worst tragedy, on April 16, 2007. A heavily armed assailant named Seung-Hui Cho chained the doors of a campus building shut before killing and wounding his victims, then turning his weapon on himself.

OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said Cho demonstrated several warning signs of impending workplace violence. Among other things, he showed an unhealthy interest in weapons.

Three employers in Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina have settled separate lawsuits with the EEOC for an amount totaling $454,000. Under the suits brought by the EEOC, all three companies were accused of racial bias.

In a class action case against Pemco Aeroplex, the Birmingham, Alabama aerospace and defense company, the EEOC alleged that nooses, swastikas and other threatening symbols created a hostile work environment for African American workers. The company provides aircraft maintenance and modification services for government and the military.

The other two cases settled involved Ryan’s Restaurant Group, Inc. and Renal Care Group, Inc.

In the larges of the three settlements, Pemco Aeroplex will pay $390,000 in addition to changing its policies on workplace discrimination. According to the EEOC, the suit was based on 36 separate discrimination charges filed since 1998. After an investigation, the EEOC charged that since 1995 Pemco had engaged in a patter of race discrimination by subjecting them to racial slurs, epithets and racially offensive graffiti. The graffiti included Ku Klux Klan symbols.

In addition to the payment, the settlement requires Pemco to change its policies concerning racial harassment and retaliation. This includes training all employees in preventing racial harassment annually. The company will also institute new complaint procedures, and introduce preventative measures. Pemco will also provide team building and diversity training, and conduct surveys to determine the effectiveness of these measures.

The EEOC’s suit against Pemco was dismissed, but reinstated on appeal. Some Pemco employees had filed a separate suit against Pemco, which was settled in 2002.  Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it is illegal to discriminate against workers based on race, color, religion, sex, or country of origin.

“Despite what some may think, overt racial harassment of African Americans still occurs in workplaces more than 40 years after passage of the landmark Civil Rights Act,” said EEOC Chair Naomi C. Earp. “In addition to the severe types of race discrimination witnessed in these cases, the EEOC also is seeing more subtle forms of bias against people of color – which is why we recently launched the E.RACE Initiative.”

In a second case, Ryan’s Restaurant Group of Jasper, Alabama agreed to pay $41,000 to a former employee who is black. The suit charges that the employer created and condoned a racially hostile work environment at its restaurant. This included a display of hangman’s nooses by the restaurant manager.

When the Ryan’s employee complained about the nooses, he was fired in retaliation. Under Title VII, employers are not allowed to take any retaliatory action against employees who lodge a complaint with the EEOC. This includes changing the employee’s working conditions or pay, disciplining them or firing them.

Ryan’s Restaurant Group has its headquarters in Greer, South Carolina. The company operates more than 340 Ryan’s and Fire Mountain restaurants in 23 states in the South and Midwest. The company employs over 23,000 people and serves 110 million customers each year. As part of this settlement, Ryan’s will institute anti-discrimination training.

The third suit settled was with Renal Care Group, Inc. of Jackson, Mississippi. The EEOC alleges that Renal Care discriminated against an African American manager and fired her when she complained about the discrimination. Under the settlement, the company will pay the employee $21,000.

“Each of these lawsuits addressed the mistreatment of blacks in the workplace based solely on their race,” said EEOC Attorney C. Emanuel Smith, of the Birmingham office. “The Commission will continue to identify issues, criteria and barriers that contribute to race and color discrimination.”

All of the companies in this article deny any wrongdoing.