By Chris Mondics | Inquirer Staff Writer In a precedent setting decision that likely will reverberate through election day and beyond, the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision Thursday upheld President Obama’s health care overhaul including a requirement that all non-exempt Americans buy health insurance. The court said the law’s requirement that individual Americans purchase insurance or be subject to a penalty levied by the IRS was constitutional. It also upheld a provision greatly expanding Medicaid, the health care program for the poor jointly financed by the state and federal governments. But the court struck down the provision that states  [ Read More ]

A horrific accident on Sunday in Freehold not only took Jason Rivera’s life, but has now left two young children without their father and their mother, Jennifer Regan, without her fiancé. What makes this story even more heartbreaking? Jennifer recently lost her job, making caring for her two kids, Jason, 2, and Izabella, 3, during this time even harder. Jason, a 32-year-old Middletown resident, was riding his motorcycle along Elton-Adelphia Road in Freehold on Sunday along with nearly 1000 other bikes as part of the NJ March of Dimes “Bikers for Babies” event. His motorcycle was involved in an accident  [ Read More ]

How many times have we heard it? “They told me that I had to resign or I’d be fired.” As if they were doing you some big favor. So the employee submits a letter of resignation, presumably to avoid the stigma attached to being fired. The comes the application for unemployment, and the frequent denial of benefits, since unemployment is not available to those who voluntarily quit a job. The law in NJ has recently been clarified by the decision of the Appellate Division in Lord v. Board of Review. The facts were simple. Lord, the applicant for benefits, needed  [ Read More ]

Posted by Jay S. Becker There has been a lot of discussion lately regarding an employer’s right to know as much as possible about an applicant, as opposed to that applicant’s right to privacy. Should an employer be limited by what is contained on an applicant’s self-serving resume or application, and/or what the applicant decides to share during an interview, or should an employer have a right to learn more about the applicant, by demanding the applicant’s password to his/her social media sites? When does an employer’s right to know versus an applicant’s right to privacy begin and end? If  [ Read More ]

SunTrust Banks, one of the nation’s largest financial services providers, plans to “vigorously defend” itself against a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by a federal agency in a Florida court last week. The suit alleges that a branch manager in Sarasota subjected female employees to “unwelcome, sexually graphic and vulgar sexual harassment” over three years. Court filings from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission describe an escalating pattern of “sexually offensive comments and conduct” that continued for years despite multiple complaints by employees, who were later fired or left their jobs. The alleged perpetrator, however, still works for SunTrust. He was recently  [ Read More ]

Everyone knows that workers who badmouth their bosses on Facebook or otherwise act out via social media can be a headache for human-resources departments. But in a growing number of cases, the actual transgression is not the problem so much as dealing with colleagues anxious to turn the bad actor in. That’s the word from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), which in a recent story posted on SHRM Online outlined the problem of “Facebook snitches,” workers who seek out bosses — sometimes armed with printouts — to report instances of co-workers making inappropriate comments about their jobs online.  [ Read More ]

Facebook may be trying to reach out to kids under 13, but the social network already has a significant number of senior-citizen members, according to a new report. Forrester’s “Digital Seniors” marketing report reveals that more than 20 million US seniors (people over the age of 65) are online and, among that group, nearly half (49%) are using Facebook, according to CNET. And senior citizens may make up a valuable demographic for Facebook. Seniors have more money to spend than 18-24 year-olds and they’re more loyal to brands than adults are in general, Forrester found. More than 60% of online  [ Read More ]

The Case of the Older Men, the Younger Men, and the Naughty Emails Phil Miles at Lawffice Space writes here in his weekly edition of Case of the Week about a recent decision from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals — (PA, NJ, DE, and USVI). This case is about older employees who claim age discrimination, but admit sharing porn at work with one another. Guh?!? Well, ya see, these plaintiffs claimed that younger employees shared porn at work too and the company didn’t discipline the young bucks as much as the old heads. Ultimately, however, to prevail on a  [ Read More ]

“It will take a lot more than a letter from a lawyer to shut me up,” says Sodastream CEO Daniel Birnbaum. Sodastream (NASDAQ:SODA), the Israel-based company that manufactures home soda-making products, has received a cease-and-desist letter from The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) in South Africa. The letter was in relation to an outdoor marketing campaign, which Sodastream refers to as “the cage.” The exhibit features cans and bottles that Sodastream employees collect from dump sites which are placed in a giant cage used to illustrate how many bottles and cans a family uses over the course of either three or five  [ Read More ]

By James Queally and Sue Epstein/The Star-Ledger FREEHOLD — For the second time in four days, the Monmouth County Courthouse had to be shut down after several people fell ill inside the facility, authorities said. More than 10 people became sick for an unknown reason and were removed from the courthouse, which was closed at 1 p.m., according to Cynthia Scott, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Office. Reports of people suffering shortness of breath, nausea, chest pain, palpitations, rashes and dizziness on Friday forced county officials to clean the courthouse over the weekend. “This afternoon, County Emergency Management and Health  [ Read More ]

The tight job market has affected all demographics — but older workers have really felt the squeeze, particularly if they found themselves out of work for one reason or another. Statistics show that older workers are unemployed for an average of 44 weeks (more than 10 months), according to an AARP report. Things employers want to see on your resume, we recognized how easy it is to get frustrated and want to give up during the job search. But staying active and positive is the key to job search success. Follow the tips below to maximize your job search and  [ Read More ]

By Herb Weisbaum, The ConsumerMan Updated at 3:57 p.m. ET: Read any good bank disclosure forms lately? Researchers at the Pew Charitable Trusts carefully read checking account disclosures from 12 of the nation’s largest banks and 12 of the largest credit unions to see what a new customer would face. In a just-released report, Pew says the disclosure documents are long and confusing which can result in costly and unexpected penalty fees for overdrawing that account. By one estimate, Americans paid $29.5 billion in overdraft fees last year. “They make it pretty complicated,” says Susan Weinstock, director of Pew’s Safe  [ Read More ]

(Source: SEC) – Washington, D.C., March 15, 2012 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged two senior executives and their California-based firm with defrauding officers and directors at publicly-traded companies in an elaborate $8 million stock lending scheme. The SEC alleges that Argyll Investments LLC’s purported stock-collateralized loan business is merely a fraud perpetrated by James T. Miceli and Douglas A. McClain, Jr. to acquire publicly traded stock from corporate officers and directors at a discounted price from market value, separately sell the shares for full market value in order to fund the loan, and use the remaining proceeds  [ Read More ]

By Charles Riley @CNNMoneyInvest NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon will tell Congress Wednesday that the bank’s massive loss can be blamed on insufficient risk controls and a failure by traders to understand the bets they were placing. Dimon’s prepared testimony, provided by the bank, indicates that the CEO will sound a note of contrition before members of the Senate Banking Committee. We have let a lot of people down,” Dimon will say, “and we are sorry for it.” JPMorgan (JPM, Fortune 500) announced last month that it had suffered a multi-billion dollar loss on trades built  [ Read More ]

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is supporting a bill to ban the use of domestic drones to monitor citizens in the U.S. He spoke with CNN’s Carol Costello a day after a U.S. Navy drone crashed in Salisbury, Maryland. Here is the transcript: Costello: The smoldering wreckage is still there lying in a marsh in Salisbury, Maryland. It’s what’s left of a military drone. No injuries. No property damage, but $176 million loss for the air force. The air force is still investigating why this thing crashed. The drone is used for military purposes, but smaller drones are being used by  [ Read More ]