These days, more and more people are opting to work from home… and for more varied reasons than ever before!  Parents are choosing to work from home so they can stay home with the kids, laid-off workers are starting up home based businesses, entrepreneurs are working from home through an almost entirely online business, and more and more employees telecommuting to work.  It is such an exciting time! 

Also, in many areas the cost of child care is more expensive than what many workers can earn working part time.  Alas, many mothers stay at home with the kids.  I just heard about the website called homewiththekids.com.  The site markets itself as a place where you can find real companies that hire work-from-home employees. 

However, like with many other great things… there are scams out there.  The Federal Trade Commission even published an article about work-at-home scams to help protect consumers from falling victim to some of the more common schemes such as medical billing, envelope stuffing, home assembly or craft work.   You can access the FTC article by clicking here.

If you’re thinking of starting a home-based business, check out the valuable resources in LawInfo’s Free Business Resource Center, where you can incorporate your business, find helpful tips about starting a business, and learn about Business Law.   Also, Business.gov has some cool tools including a small-business start-up assessment and a small resource library.

On July 24, 3009, the federal minimum wage increased to $7.25 per hour.  This increase is the last of three provided by the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007.  Many states also have minimum wage laws, however where the employee is covered by both state and federal law, the employee is entitled to whichever is the higher minimum wage.  As a result, all employees covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act must be paid at least a minimum of $7.25 per hour.  Also, employers must post a revised Federal minimum wage poster in their places of work.   You can download the revised FLSA poster by clicking here. 

Now, there are some exceptions to the minimum wage provisions of the law, though the exceptions tend to be pretty narrowly defined.  Employers should check with legal counsel regarding properly classifying employees and properly compensating them.  Violations of wage and hour laws, even if done accidentally, can result in serious penalties.  For more information about wages and hours, speak to a labor and employment attorney who can advise you about your legal options.

Wildfires again in the news…    Reminds me of a recent fire scare at a local business here in San Diego.  The company conducted evacuation procedures in accordance with its policies to protect employees from possible injury from a fire hazard.  With the recent fires in the news, I can’t help but wonder how many employers actually understand their legal obligations when it comes to fire safety. 

Under the law, employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthful workplace for their employees – one that is free from hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm.  With regard to fire safety, OSHA regulations require employers to comply with hazard-specific safety and health standards as issued and enforced either by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or by an OSHA-approved State Plan. Employers can be cited for violating these laws and regulations if there is a recognized hazard, and they do not take reasonable steps to prevent or abate the hazard.

The problem, though, is that many employers don’t know how to comply with OSHA regulations… or, worse, don’t even know there are rules they’re required to follow!  That’s where I can hopefully help!  OSHA publishes various manuals to help businesses understand their obligations with regard to workplace safety.  While not the official rules, the guides can help businesses in their compliance efforts.  I’ve provided OSHA’s manual regarding Fire Safety below for your reference.  It provides a general overview of OSHA’s fire safety standards and fire emergency protection guidelines.

This comprehensive overview manual from OSHA explains how fire service operations can be influenced by different building features and offers considerations for design professionals that can help facilitate these operations. The manual includes chapters and narratives on building and site design, sprinkler systems, standpipe systems, fire department connections, fire alarm and communications systems, as well as various firefighting systems.   To access the manual, click here.

Learn more about OSHA regulations in LawInfo’s Free Legal Resource Center.  For more information conact an OSHA attorney or a general employment attorney by visiting LawInfo’s attorney directory.

A new fun web tool is available on Hunch.com, a new website designed to help you make common decisions.   It is a web-based machine of sorts designed by some very smart people.  The Hunch website explains it uses an algorithm built by computer scientists with backgrounds in machine learning to help you figure out what decision to make.  It’s pretty simple – you just answer a few questions and get some results to help you figure out what to do!  One interesting one for those budding entrepreneurs out there….  Should You Start Your Own Business?  Check it out: http://www.hunch.com/should-i-start-my-own-business/. 

When you’re finished getting your hunch, circle back to LawInfo for all the tools you’ll need to actually get your business off the ground the right way. 

Incorporate a Business

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Find a business attorney in your area for assistance with properly forming your business, obtaining business licenses and permits, hiring employees and other workers, setting up business policies, finding a commercial lease, working with vendors and suppliers, invoicing, executive compensation, business and corporate governance, and other matters related to starting and operating your business.  Click on this link to find a Business Law Attorney in your area.

Peter J. Walsh, the owner of Walsh Dodge in Jersey City, N.J., started out selling used cars in his hometown 28 years ago after the birth of his daughter. He slowly built his business, and felt as if he’d finally made it when he earned his Chrysler shingle in 2000.

But on Tuesday, Walsh Dodge will lose that shingle — as will 788 other dealers across the country. Auburn Hills, Mich.-based Chrysler has asked a bankruptcy court for permission to terminate the franchise agreements of about 25 percent of its dealers. Chrysler needs to cut costs, and claims current sales levels don’t justify a network of 3,189 dealers.

For Walsh and the others on the “hit list,” the last days of selling Dodge, Jeep and Chrysler vehicles have been filled with quick sales at deep discounts, along with sad goodbyes from longtime customers and feelings of dismay and anger toward the automaker they worked with for years.

“It is what it is. It’s just a tough situation,” Walsh said, speaking inside his dealership Saturday morning. “It’s been difficult mentally the past couple of months, but we’ll be OK. I don’t feel as bad for myself as I do for the young guys with families that work for me.”

Chrysler maintains that the franchises singled out for termination were chosen because they weren’t profitable, didn’t have all of the automaker’s three brands under one roof, or were located too close to another Chrysler dealer.

But the dealers argued in court that a smaller dealer base won’t save the company any substantial money. They say the dealers cover their own costs, paying for everything from the vehicles on their lots to employees, advertising and tools.

Walsh said that while Chrysler’s products were good, its dealer support was always poor — too focused on the automaker’s own short-term needs.

And while he might have been underperforming some of Chrysler’s sales criteria, Walsh claims some of that was the automaker’s fault, pointing to its insistence that he sell more pickup trucks — a vehicle unsuited to the densely populated urban strip he serves across the Hudson River from New York City.

“How many Dodge pickups can I sell in Jersey City? It’s not Waco, Texas,” Walsh said.

A court hearing that began Thursday in New York with testimony from over a dozen dealers is scheduled to continue with legal arguments on Tuesday. U.S. Judge Arthur Gonzalez is expected to rule after the arguments conclude.

Steven Landry, Chrysler’s executive vice president of North American sales, said Tuesday’s deadline remains fixed. Dealers can sell the vehicles after that date, but they won’t be able to offer Chrysler sales incentives, making it tough for them to compete.

“We won’t be changing any dealers on the list. We won’t be changing the date,” he said.

Landry said Chrysler had commitments for the inventory of 42,000 vehicles on the lots of the affected dealers. Dealers have sold 16,000 vehicles to customers since the May 14 announcement and Landry said the remaining 26,000 cars and trucks would be purchased by remaining dealers.

Chuck Eddy, a Youngstown, Ohio, dealer who was among those chosen to remain with Chrysler, said dealers have quickly bought up the inventory of those going out of business and are preparing for the transition.

“I have no fire sale going on. There’s no dealer in my town who was terminated having a fire sale,” Eddy said. “People are buying the car for the true value.”

At the Viva Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge in El Paso, Texas, finance manager Jay Welsh said news of financial trouble with Chrysler and the upcoming terminations of other dealerships has done little to deter new car buyers.

The dealership, which sells all three of Chrysler’s brands and escaped termination, sold between 55 and 65 cars a month in April and May, compared with an average of about 25 cars a month in January, February and March, he said.

A few buyers have questioned the viability of warranties, while others have been looking for “fire sale” prices that the dealership has yet to offer, he said.

But other dealers said they moved quickly after finding out they were losing their franchise agreements, hoping to keep their losses to a minimum.

By late last week, Dale Horn, owner of a Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep dealership in Malvern, Ark., had sold 30 of the 35 cars and trucks he had when the company told him that his franchise would be yanked.

Horn said that in exchange for its help unloading the vehicles, Chrysler wanted him to sign papers allowing it to shop the inventory “at a figure less than it cost me.” Instead, he decided to try to sell it all himself, taking losses on all but a few, while making tiny profits on the others.

“In essence, I paid people to take some of my cars,” he said. “It’s just not a pleasant deal. If I’m as small as I am, having the problems that I’m having, I feel so bad for the guys that have got 200 in inventory, or 300,” he said.

At other dealers, longtime customers have showed up to both buy a car and say goodbye.

Janet Reuther Schopp, dealer and general manager at Reuther Chrysler Jeep in suburban St. Louis, said former customers and people she’d never seen before came in to help whittle down her already scaled-back inventory of 125 vehicles.

“It was a huge show of respect for us,” said Schopp, who continues a family business her father started 50 years ago. “They thought it was the right thing to do.”

A neighbor sent her niece in to buy. Her attorney bought two cars for himself and his wife. A stranger who lost his job made a point of driving out of his way to buy at Reuther and a Boeing employee in St. Louis bought a car from her on principle. Nearly all of them paid full price.

Mike Lobb, general manager of Dave Croft Motors, in Collinsville, Ill., outside St. Louis, will try to survive by selling used cars and running a service center, but still held out hope Saturday that a reprieve might come from Chrysler or the bankruptcy court.

Croft, which normally has 350 new cars on the lot, is down to 100 vehicles. Eighty of his sales in the last three weeks have been to longtime customers.

Walsh, the Jersey City dealer, said he has about 14 vehicles left, which he expects to be redistributed to other Chrysler dealers. He said he’s glad he didn’t take more vehicles when Chrysler officials were pushing dealers to help save the company by boosting their inventories this year.

For Walsh, who plans to keep selling used cars, the move marks the end of Chrysler’s slow painful demise for him. He had to reduce his work force from 30 people to 14 during the past year. And his sales of new and used vehicles have declined a third from their peak of 1,500 units a year in 2000, he said.

“My employees have been with me an average of seven years — they’re all local people — and it puts a hole in my heart when they come in here and I have to tell them I’m letting them go,” Walsh said.

___

Associated Press Writers Victor Epstein in Jersey City, N.J; Ken Thomas in Washington; Tom Krisher in Detroit; Alicia A. Caldwell in El Paso, Texas; and Cheryl Wittenauer in St. Louis contributed to this report.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

I love eBay…  just love it.  The whole idea of it, the convenience, the opportunities, the company itself… not to mention the bargains!  What you may not realize, however, is that consumer product safety laws and regulations apply to anyone who sells or distributes consumer products.  The laws cover not only products resold at thrift stores, consignment stores, and charities, but also products sold by individuals holding yard sales, through online ads like those on Craigslist, and through online auctions like eBay.  

While you aren’t required to go so far as to test your products for safety, you can’t knowingly sell products that do not meet the requirements of the law.  AND … ignorance of the law is not an excuse! 

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) published a handbook for resellers of used products to help them comply with the law… and help keep unsafe products out of the hands of consumers.

Among the kinds of products you CAN’T resell are the following:

•  Products that have been recalled by CPSC.

•  Toys and other articles intended for use by children, and any furniture, with paint or other surface coatings containing lead over specified amounts.

•  Products primarily intended for children age 12 or younger with lead content over a specific amount.

•  Certain toys or child care articles that contain any one of six prohibited chemicals known as phthalates, which are primarily used as plasticizers.

•  Other products that violate CPSC’s safety standards, bans, rules or regulations or otherwise present a substantial product hazard.

If you end up violating the consumer product safety laws, then you could be subject to a number of penalties!   CPSC may respond in a variety of ways, however, depending upon the circumstances, including the nature of the product defect, the number of products, the severity of the risk of injury associated with the product and the type of violation.

By all means… don’t freak out and stop selling your items on eBay!  Just pay attention to what’s in the news about dangerous or unsafe products (who hasn’t heard about the lead paint issues with kids’ toys), use your common sense, and it doesn’t hurt to periodically check out the recalled products lists.   You might be surprised to learn that CPSC recalls several hundred types of consumer products every year.  Before taking selling a product, especially children’s toys, cribs, and other kid stuff, check the CPSC Web site for dangerous recalled products.  You can search by product type, company name, product description, hazard, country of manufacture and by the month and year in which the recall took place.  Check out recalls at www.recalls.gov and other information at www.cpsc.gov.   View the CPSC Handbook by clicking here.

Remember, if you have concerns about an unsafe product or have been injured by one, contact an attorney in your area today so you can best protect your legal rights.

Colorado shoppers will be able to keep using plastic grocery bags after lawmakers stopped what would have been the nation’s first statewide ban on plastic grocery bags. Lawmakers successfully lobbied that the ban would lead to increased use of paper bags, which take more energy and money to produce, and take up more room in landfills than plastic bags.

However, bill sponsor Sen. Jennifer Veiga believes there was political, and personal, motivation behind the decision as well. “No other states have passed such bans yet and I think Colorado lawmakers were wary of being the first. Also, I have been contacted by constituents who didn’t want to have to give up their plastic bags.”

Lawmakers in several other states such as Hawaii, Missouri, New Jersey and New York are considering launching similar bans on plastic bags this year. And nine other states are considering adding fees to plastic bags, ranging from 3 cents in Vermont to 25 cents in California.

Veiga claims that plastic bags pose a bigger problem than paper ones “because they’re used more widely, they’re made with petroleum products, and they aren’t recycled as much as paper.” Sen. Ted Harvey said the bill’s intentions are good but said banning plastic bags wouldn’t help the environment.

“Human nature says that people will go toward the most convenient product, and that is the paper bag,” said Harvey.

San Francisco has passed a plastic bag ban, and plastic shopping bags will be banned from stores in Los Angeles beginning July 1, 2010. Shoppers can either bring their own bags or pay 25 cents for a paper or biodegradable bag.

So what are your thoughts on this issue? Paper or plastic?

Garment workers, manufacturers and small-business owners gathered in front of Macy’s flagship store in New York Tuesday to protest a new anti-lead law they say will cut their jobs and devastate wide-spread retail profits.

The Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act of 2008 requires that all items sold for use by children under the age of twelve, including clothing, toys and other products, must be tested for lead. Congress passed the act after the U.S. recall of millions of lead-containing toys imported from China.

But this new act does not come without major concerns. Tuesday’s protest was organized by the Coalition for Safe and Affordable Childrenswear, which represents hundreds of manufacturers and family business workers. The coalition says the new rules would cost thousands of jobs and drive companies out of business.

Coalition members said manufacturing practices have already changed to comply with the new law, but they are asking Congress to ease a provision that will retroactively force them to pull $500 million worth of possible lead-containing products from shelves.
In passing the act, Congress had asked the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to come up with specific methods on how and by whom products should be tested and certified to be lead-free. But the coalition says up until now, there have been no definitive regulations set in place to execute this.

“Until regulations are set in place on how to do the testing and certify that something is lead-free, retailers won’t risk putting anything on their shelves that could contain lead, thereby halting the demand for thousands of products, and cutting manufacturing jobs in the process,” a spokesperson for the coalition said.

Steve Levy, of Star Ride Kids sportswear, said the coalition is not asking for special treatment or government bailouts. “All we are asking for is some common sense. At the exact moment when Congress is debating a $900 billion economic rescue bill, it should be looking for every opportunity to create jobs, not kill them.”

It is true that the economy is facing its worse financial crisis in history, and that every job this country can sustain is critically important. However, what is the lesser of two evils in this situation? Keeping jobs and businesses afloat, or keeping health regulations in check and making sure toxic products do not end up in the hands of our children? Although it is clear that the coalition, Congress, and the CPSC all want to arrive at a place where lead-containing products are not released into the marketplace and manufacturing jobs aren’t threatened in the process, until that time, whose side are you on?

For more information on the Consumer Products Safety Improvement Act of 2008, visit the CPSC. To learn more about the Act’s predecessor, the Consumer Product Reform Act of 2007, click here, or visit LawInfo’s free legal resource center for more CPSC legal news.

On Wednesday, Toyota Motor Corp announced it would recall more than 1.35 million Vitz, Belta and Ractis international models to fix a defect in the seatbelt, a component in the exhaust system, or both.

Subject to the recall in Japan are 525,898 Vitz, Belta and Ractis cars built from January 2005 to April 2008, and a combined 830,000 units of the Vitz subcompact and Belta (called Yaris in many markets) exported to Europe, North America and other countries.

The recall started in Japan, where one case of fire was reportedly caused by a faulty seatbelt design, which could cause a noise-absorber device to melt when the seatbelt tensioner is activated in a collision, Toyota said.

The defective exhaust-gas recirculation (EGR) pipe, which is being recalled due to a possibility of the pipe cracking and leaking exhaust gases, also originated in Japan, but no accidents have been reported.

Toyota declined to disclose the estimated cost of the recalls.

For more information, or if you own one of these recalled cars, call Toyota at 800-331-4331. For more information on product recalls, visit LawInfo’s free legal resource center, or contact a Lead Counsel products liability attorney in your area today.

The FDA has announced that more than 125 different products have been recalled for possible salmonella contamination in what is now being called one of the largest food recalls in history.

Everything from crackers to ice cream to dog biscuits is being recalled and investigated. On Tuesday, PetSmart recalled seven varieties of its “Great Choice” dog biscuits. On Wednesday, NutriSystem issued a recall for their peanut butter granola bars. Last week, Kellogg recalled some of its Austin and Keebler brand peanut butter crackers. Salmonella was later confirmed in a package of Austin crackers.

All recalled products were made with peanut paste or peanut butter manufactured at a Peanut Corp. of America plant in Blakely, GA. The plant has suspended further production of any peanut-based products at this time.

To help consumers, the FDA has set up on its site a searchable list of recalled peanut products. “We expect (the) number to continue to increase,” said Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA’s food safety program. More than 480 people have been sickened in the outbreak, which has contributed to at least six deaths.

Products liability refers to a manufacturer or seller being held liable for placing a defective product into the hands of a consumer. Products liability cases may include defective or poorly designed machinery, tools, motor vehicle defects, recreational products, pharmaceuticals and other defective products and equipment.

A person injured by a defective or dangerous product may be eligible to file a lawsuit for product liability. To learn more, visit LawInfo’s legal resource center for articles and answers to frequently-asked product liability questions.