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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.

What can regions of the U.S. with chronically high unemployment do to pull themselves out of economic stagnation?

One thing they can do is to apply for a WIRED grant. They can try to join 26 regions around the country that have received a total of $260 million worth of the WIRED revitalization funds that have helped them develop the kinds of highly-skilled, high-paying jobs that are part of the evolving global marketplace.

They can join regions like the Delaware Valley, the Mississippi/Arkansas Delta region, northern Indiana, northern Alabama, and the Delaware Valley. All of those regions have received grants in the past.

A South Carolina unemployment grant could benefit the workers in South Carolina’s regions of traditionally high joblessness. Now is the time to apply. The U.S. Labor Department has just announced a third generation of the WIRED grants.

The grants are extremely competitive, and are awarded to regions that come up with new and different ways to kick-start stalled economies. That explains the full name of the WIRED grant – the Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development Initiative.

Each governor has received a letter from U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao announcing the new round of grants. The governors in turn will each choose a maximum of two grant proposals to forward on to the U.S. Department of Labor, which will require the applying regions to outline other sources of funding they are receiving.

In the past, the grants have encouraged 10 different federal agencies to come together to work on creating high-skilled, high-paying jobs for regional workforces.

“Investing in area workforces through this collaborative approach will boost entire regions’ economic vitality,” said Secretary Chao when she announced the earlier, second round of grants. “This regional economic development strategy transcends political boundaries to better leverage a region’s assets to help workers succeed in the 21st century worldwide economy.”

Emily Stover DeRocco, the Assistant Secretary of Labor for Employment and Training, said the Third Generation of WIRED is designed “to position local Workforce Investment Boards as leaders of a strategic regional partnership.”

The US Dept. of Labor has announced an alliance with a major human resource firm, which would result in better work prospects for South Carolina workers with disabilities.

In 2001, The US office of Disability Employment Policy or ODEP, was founded by Elaine Chao, the US Secretary of Labor. Its purpose is to make sure that the workers with disabilities have as much access to jobs as their able-bodied counterparts. Roy Grizzard, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Disability Employment Policy, would also be heading the newly-formed federal agency. Before ODEP was formed, US Dept. of Labor had to oversee the federal policies for workers with disabilities, along with a plethora of other responsibilities. The new agency was formed with the vision that it would be able to focus all its efforts on this particular area. Research has shown that workers of disabilities are not employed as much and as often as they should be, because of a number of reasons. ODEP is making efforts to change that.

The Society of Human Resource Managers which is also known as SHRM is an international organization which has been in existence since 1948. It has 550 chapters in more than a hundred countries. It boasts of having more than 200,000 members. The SHRM’s explains its mission as “to serve the needs of human resource professionals by proving the most essential and comprehensive resources available.”

The nascent alliance between ODEP and SHRM will focus on improving the disabled workers’ access to resources, conducting research, providing cross-agency information and guidance, assisting the state agencies with resources and also facilitating communication between different agencies concerned with human resource. This new partnership will be focusing on training, education, outreach, communication and technical assistance for workers with disabilities. It will also attempt to promote a national dialogue on the employment of persons with disabilities