Nebraska Comployment Pod

Will the protests combine with concerns about workplace safety and COVID to spark radical change? I don't know, but I speculate in this episode.

Some communities in rural Nebraska are per capita leaders in COVID exposure. In this episode I talk more about the link between occupational safety and workplace safety as well as moves to protect business from COVID litigation -- including workers' compensation claims.

COVID-19 has struck cities and towns with meatpacking plants particularly hard. Nebraska cities and towns like Grand Island, Lexington, Crete and Dakota City are no exception. My legal practice takes me face to face with these workers and employers in those cities and towns. In this episode, I talk about COVID-19 and workers' compensation as well creative ways workers are skirting the limited remedies of workers' compensation to hold the packing plants legally accountable for their role in the COVID-19 crisis.

In this episode I talk about how employment at-will is making the coronavirus crisis worse. I also talk unemployment benefits for gig economy workers and the weakness of the WARN Act. There is also some non-COVID 19 talk about the recent Comcast decision by the Supreme Court.

In this episode I talk about how workers compensation insurance may not help most workers effected by coronavirus. I think paid leave and good health insurance are a better remedy. But while the proposed emergency paid leave legislation passed by the House could help some, it’s inadequate for many reasons.

In Episode 11, I unpack Mike Bloomberg's use of non-disclosure agreements to settle sexual harassment and gender discrimination cases.  I'll skip the serpent imagery, but I'm going at least 3/4 Chapo taking the senior Senator from Massachusetts out of the show notes.  Bluntly. the first segment has some real strong Gen-X -guy -recording- something -in -his- car energy.  Then I tone it down a notch or three with a nice chill segment about marijuana and workers' compensation. It's a lot more fun to talk about preemption and fee schedules in workers' compensation when the focus is weed rather than air ambulances.

This podcast talks about civil rights all the time, not just on MLK Day. In this episode I talk about the intersection of workplace safety and civil rights. I also go through some legal history of the civil rights movement and how cases from the Reconstruction and Jim Crow era still resonate today.

I talk about the opioid crisis and workers' compensation, the ADA, the ACA, constitutional challenges to workers' compensation laws and the gig economy.

An article about a successful regional discrimination case in China, lead me to think about why that kind of case wouldn't work in the United States. That lead me to thinking about Article IV of the U.S. Constitution and why workers' compensation benefits aren't as mobile as injured workers.

Some employers do their worst to suppress workers' compensation claims. A recent article in Bloomberg Law documents what UPS is doing to under report work injuries and explains why pressure from Amazon may be increasing pressure for them to do so. I talk about how workers compensation laws help discourage the under reporting of injuries.Finally I talk about why stronger civil remedies rather than enhanced criminal enforcement should be the solution to this problem.

How is Jeff Bezos like Frank Gallagher? Listen and find out

In this episode I discuss the Comcast case which was heard by the Supreme Court on November 13th. It looks like the Court will read a heightened "but for" causation standard into 42 USC 1981. Section 1981 is our oldest civil rights law and was passed to protect former slaves after the Civil War. I discuss the ramifications of the case and put it in the context of other recent civil rights decisions and employment law as a whole.

What’s the problem with the insurance Industry having award ceremonies for injured workers?

Injured workers need to get medical care to have good outcomes in their workers' compensation case. But many barriers stand in their way. This episode discusses some of the reasons injured workers stop going to the doctor.

What’s employment at-will? Where does it come from? How is it influence felt in the law and politics? Find out in this episode.