National EEOC Call Center

In order to better respond to the estimated million calls per year they recieve, the EEOC has launched a call center. The center can be reached toll free at 800-669-4000. For those with hearing and speech impairments, the TTY number is 800-669-6820.

Details at HR.BLR.com

Supreme Court Expands Protection for Older Workers

"The Supreme Court made it easier to sue for age discrimination on the job yesterday, ruling that older workers may take their employers to federal court even in cases where the alleged adverse impact on them was not intentional.
- - - - -
Advocates for the elderly said the court's ruling means employers will have to take greater care to show that policies such as pay-scale adjustments or layoffs do not unreasonably affect older members of their workforces."

from the HR Blog

Take a look at this - employees can sue even if the harm was not intentional. Read more at Boston.com.

More seniors want work; more employers want seniors

"If the 77 million boomers born between 1946 and 1964 were all to retire at the traditional age of 65, labor force growth would slow dramatically, economists said. But many plan to keep working.

Eight in 10 boomers expect to work in retirement, according to a 2003 AARP/Roper survey in 2003. Only 7 percent expected to be in a full-time job, though, while 25 percent said they'd work part time for income and 30 percent said they'd work part time for enjoyment."

from Employment Digest -- Read on

 

Older Workers & Workers Comp

There are, and will be, more of "them" (errr... us). You know, the Older/Bolder crowd - the ones available in the spring and fall to serve their peers on behalf of your organization when your student help is long gone.

A story at the Workers Comp Insider relates some of the risks of this experienced crowd. Among them:

• Higher Risks - injuries take longer to heal
• Safety Factors - reflexes and vision really do decline with age, and maybe hearing too. So everything that is hazardous becomes more so.

Read more.

Going with Your Gut - Blink Part Two

Author Max Gladwell thinks our decision making skills can be easily hijacked.

Some evidience?

• Anonymous auditions have increased women's participation in orchestras from 5% to 50%.
• less than 4% of the general population is over 6 feet tall, yet a majority of CEOs are.

Gladwell suggests that in making decisions, sometimes less information is more noting that, among other things, lone police officers often make better decisions than when in groups. Groups sometimes feel too sure of themselves.

Read more about Gladwell and his book, "Blink", at Recruiting.com

Job Ads That Do Not Work

A recent study points out that that 1 out of every 5 dollars spent on advertising is wasted. The price tag for ads that fail is $50 BILLION dollars a year.

This Advertising Research Foundation Study points to two failure factors:

• a lot of ads deliver the wrong message
• companies invest in ads beyond the point of diminishing returns

Web Recruiting pro Peter Weddle takes a look at what this means for recruitment advertising in an article at RecruitingNews.com. Among his points:

• reproducting a print classified online is not going to be an effective way to build interest in your jobs
• posting no more than a position description can be even worse

Says Weddle, "As a result, these ads have little information, very little appeal or both. When that occurs, the message the job seeker receives is loud and clear: here’s a company that is too lazy, too arrogant or too incompetent to use the online medium to its full advantage. Said another way, here’s a place you don’t want to work."

Read the full article at RecruitingNew.com and check out more of Peter's work at Weddles.com.

Undocumented Immigrants on the Rise

Between 2000 and 2004 the undocumented immigrant population grew from 8.4 to 10.3 million according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center. The data shows that 5.9 million of those came from Mexico despite federal efforts to stem the tide.

Details at the Chicago Sun Times

Free Government Database of Skilled Job Seekers with Disabilities

The Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP), under the Dept of Labor, is offering a Workforce Recruitment Program database of job seekers with disabilities in cooperation with the Department of Defense. The list of 1,913 qualified students and recent grads with disabilities are seeking summer and full-time jobs.

The candidates come from more than 200 colleges and are pre-screened, having skills ranging from business to engineering, computer sciences and more.

To request a copy of the CD-ROM, send your name, company name, address and phone number to wrp@dol.gov or call ODEP at (202) 693-7880.

More details at HR.Blr.com

Straight to the source at DOL

Look for More People 55 & Older in the Workforce

According to USA Today the labor force participation rate for people age 55 or older has increased by 3.7 percentage points since 2001. Contrast this with a decline in the overall workforce participation rate. The reasons?

• aging Boomers
• hard economic times tapping out retirement accounts
• a desire to work for the experience, not the money

The paper cites Dean Baker who says that in the last year, people age 55 or older accounted for more than half of the job gains in the Labor Department's household survey of employment.

H-2B Part 2: Save our Small and Seasonal Business Act

This bill has been filed in the US Senate and House in an attempt to ease the pain of the H-2B cap. It's laid out to be a 2-year fix, providing an exemption from the cap to H-2B workers of the previous 3 years.

The bill numbers are H.R.793 and S.352.

Learn more at Congress.org

H-2B Public Comment Period Extended

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has extended the public comment period for a proposal that would change the H-2B visa program. Among the proposed changes:

• create a 1-step petition process
• require electronic filing of Form I-129, Petition for Non-immigrant worker, in most cases.
• do away with the need to obtain a labor certification from DOL, with some exceptions

Read more at HR.Blr.

Sources of Hire in 2004

The folks at CareerXRoads released their 4th "Source of Hire" survey today. With a sharp focus on hires, not applicants, the survey takes apart data from 275,000 positions that were filled in 40 competitive corporations. Among the findings:

• 38% were filled by promotion or transfer
• 61% of new hires came from employee referrals and the Internet
• Hires attributed to the company website, as opposed to a commercial job board, have dropped from 67% of Internet hires to 54%

The survey is featured in the MarketPlace section of the Wall Street Journal and you may read the whole report at CareerXRoads.