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• President’s Message, May 2012
• Events Registration
• Does One Bad Apple Spoil the Bunch?
• Resilience
• Beat the Bulb Ban: LED Replacement Lamps in a New Light
• 2008 Building Energy Efficiency Standards Informational Documents
• Wonderful News for Employers with regard to Rest and Meal Breaks
• Advertise on RERA.com

President’s Message, May 2012

Last modified on 2012-05-10 13:56:57 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

President’s Message, May 2012
By
Pam Miller, Alchemy Construction

Hey, have you heard the one about “I can buy that online for less than I can get it from you”?  By now, we’ve all heard it many times over.  The question remains, how do we deal with it?

It’s human nature to want to save a buck.  We all do it.  The trick is to know where to draw the line and understand the difference between the desire for good value for money spent, and wanting a free lunch.  And we know there’s no such thing as a free lunch, right?

Do you know how much it costs you to run your business every month?  I mean, do you really know?  How many hours do you spend every month on your company related tasks?  Aside from the hours actually spent on the job…  The paperwork, truck maintenance and repairs, fuel, tool purchases and maintenance, phones, utilities, taxes, various insurances, etc.  And then the actual costs involved doing your jobs.  Do you keep track of your actual job costs?  Do you know how your actual job costs relate to the estimate you submitted to your client?  Do you know if you’re actually making money, or are you one of those people who think that if you’ve got some money left over from the job, you made a profit?

This brings me back to the online buying.  You’ve got a client who wants to save $100.00 by purchasing their own faucet online.  Have you told your client that this faucet might not be made of the same components as the one you can get from your wholesaler?  If there are material deficiencies with this product, will you be responsible for dealing with them?  Who will spend the time necessary to exchange the product or repair it?  Is this detailed in your contract?  Did you allow for this in your estimate?  Are you losing money in order to save someone else $100.00?

Many contractors find themselves faced with similar situations in dealing with architects or designers.  It is not my intention here to slam anyone in any industry.  We can all benefit from working together.  We all have something to bring to the table.  We all have varied experiences and knowledge that can produce a quality product for our clients.  My point here is determining who is more appropriate to provide the individual service and support necessary for the completion of a project.  And who is properly licensed to do the specific tasks involved.

As a contractor, it makes absolutely no sense at all to me to have the architect or designer provide any of the products or materials on a project.  This is simply not their area of expertise.  Period.  Generally, they don’t install, troubleshoot, or repair any of these products, and based on my personal experience, allowing them to provide fixtures or materials can lead to major hassles for the construction personnel out in the field doing the actual installations.  Providing the fixtures and materials for a project allows them to be able to make money on the mark up of these items while leaving the responsibility for the installation and any potential mechanical problems or aggravations to the contractor.  In my experience, many times there are missing or incompatible components, incomplete orders, etc.  If you’re going to do business this way, you need to account for this potential extra work in your estimates.  And that’s a lot of “air” to build into your bid.

The best bet for everyone involved is to stick with what you do best, and focus on your own personal area of expertise.  Architects and designers provide the design. Contractors, plumbers, electricians, tile setters, etc. provide the materials and do the installations.

Allowing the contractor who does the actual installation to make the mark up on the materials they provide is like buying an insurance policy on the project.  Contractors need to be able to feel confident in the products they install, and they need to know that the items needed for the proper and timely installation will be available when needed.  It’s the only way they can produce an accurate estimate, make any money, and provide their clients with a reasonable guarantee on the work.

Ultimately, as a licensed contractor, you are the one who will be held responsible for your workmanship and materials.  Make sure that you are the one running the show in that regard.

presidents message

Events Registration

Last modified on 2011-03-20 03:16:08 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

event registration

Does One Bad Apple Spoil the Bunch?

Last modified on 2012-05-01 13:02:21 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

DEALING WITH A DIFFICULT TEAM MEMBER

I’m going to confess that, indeed, I remember the Osmond Brothers lyrics of “one bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch, girl…” The song lyrics, a spin-off from the original proverb, “one bad apple spoils the barrel,” was a plea for the girl not to give up on love just because there was one ill-behaved boy out there. Yet, in recent years, we use this proverb to make excuses for just one person on the team who’s not the very best example of what we stand for or support in our organizations.

“Well, he brings in his numbers,” we might hear someone say as a reason for keeping around the abusive sales manager. Or, “he’s got a brilliant engineering mind,” when someone wonders why that guy gets special treatment and isn’t held accountable in the same way as his peers. If we can tie some sort of important result to a person whose behavior isn’t in alignment with our company mission or values, isn’t it okay to keep them around? In short, no; although sometimes to imagine your organization without this person’s contributions might seem painful, what you might be missing are the hidden side effects of having someone on the team who really isn’t a good fit—a bad apple, per se. What are these likely consequences?

• Decrease in morale and loss of good workers. Why would any great leader allow someone to consistently break the rules, abuse co-workers or customers, spread malicious gossip, or foster negativity? Why on earth would I want to work there? The good ones are looking for a way out, if this is going on.

• Loss of credibility in leadership: All employee groups, whether it’s explicit or implicitly stated, have a barometer of fairness by which they are evaluating you as the leader or owner of the business. When we look only at the technical skill aspect of performance, i.e. sales numbers, tangible results or KPIs (key performance indicators), we miss the overall impact of bad behaviors.

• Lower overall performance: Your employees or team members may be thinking, why should I go the extra mile, strive to stretch my goals, or put in the extra time, when this guy isn’t going to and he still gets rewarded? Allowing bad behavior to continue fosters a lack of commitment and a growing sense of apathy. Wouldn’t it be better to have an entire team of top performers, regardless of their focus, than just one person who might excel? What can you do about these team members if, in fact, they are not helping the long term success of your organization and might be, like a bad apple, spreading mold spores to infect the rest of the barrel?

• Have a courageous conversation. You must be direct, specific and respectful. If you think it’s at all possible to retain them (and their talents) as employees, you need to confront what’s been going on and what you want instead. Ask for what you want, be specific, share the positive outcomes of their willingness to change behaviors.

• Identify a “by when.” If you don’t also include a timeframe in which you want to see significant progress or evidence, their sense of urgency and yours may be very different.

• Make a contingency plan. Either do your own thinking, or discuss with a trusted confidant and advisor about how you want to handle it if they are no longer a member of your team. Sometimes, the fear of losing a talented bad apple is worse than the reality of their being gone and often (if not always), the whole team or organization can turn around and more than make up for the losses of this person. For the future, make sure you have a clear Team Agreement in place, which helps everyone know what’s expected in terms of interpersonal behaviors, and gives you a benchmark for conversations among the whole team.

Libby Wagner, author of The Influencing Option: The Art of Building a Profit Culture in Business, works with clients to help them create and sustain Profit Cultures.

THE RETAIL OBSERVER APRIL 2012

RO

bad apple

Resilience

Last modified on 2012-05-01 13:07:22 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

By Matt Power | 3/29/2012

The idea of creating a low-maintenance, food-creating ecosystem on a home site once seemed quaint. But a perfect storm of impending threats, from oil shortages to hurricanes to out of control food costs—have raised the stakes.

With its promise of self-sufficiency, local food production, cultural connectivity and low maintenance, permaculture offers what many in suburbia didn’t know they were missing.

It’s hard not to get dragged down by the news these days. One in six Americans are living in poverty. Home foreclosures have hit record highs. Tax gimmicks ensure that oil companies and banks keep getting richer, the poor get screwed, and the middle class pays for everything. Add to that the triple threat of climate change, a volatile oil supply and rising food prices, and you can see why anxiety has people carrying guns, carrying on, and, in some cases, carried away.

But according to Lisa Fernandes, a permaculture designer and educator in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, there’s another way to address the stress: She calls it resilience.

“A lot of people are not ready to talk about the big issues such as climate change,” she notes, “but with permaculture, you don’t have to. What you’re really doing is organizing on the landscape to withstand shocks, disruptions—whatever the source of those shocks, whether it’s a monster storm or unemployment or something else. Even the EPA has started talking about how to adapt to climate change, rather than simply how to try to stop it. For example, many people are now underwater on their mortgages, trying to figure out how to ;make ends meet. This is a step in the right direction.”

She adds that talking about sustainability doesn’t accurately capture the depth of the permaculture philosophy. “That word is rapidly losing its meaning. We’re not just trying to sustain what we have. We’re trying to move past a model of simply reducing the amount of damage we do—to actually repairing and improving the landscape. We’re re-organizing how we interact with the earth, so that our needs are met—that’s another conversation—and we can bounce back from whatever the future throws at us.

In the Beginning

The term permaculture first arrived in the 1970s, but the ideas it embodies have borrowed from farmers, thinkers and social critics since about the 1920s, not to mention centuries of indigenous knowledge. Some of the tenets of permaculture reflect the writings and teachings of famed architect Christopher Alexander, Fernandes says. His seminal book “A Pattern Language,” turned many of modernisms concepts on their head, and showed how human psychology is impacted by living spaces.

“From the basis of his work, permaculture designers learn to do things like observe the natural pattern of how people and animals want to travel across a property,” she says, “before committing those travel paths to a hard and fast design or to hardscaping.”

That’s how permaculture works, she explains. You find out how people really live—or want to live–then shape the landscape around those patterns.

Moving from traditional landscapes—water-sucking, chemically dependent lawns and non-native shrubs—to edible, medicinal, beautiful plants and functional hardscapes is not simply a retreat into the past, Fernandes says. “We’re not suggesting a return to pre-industrial farming. We’re borrowing from earlier times, yes, but adding advanced technology and decades of plant and soil research to create outdoor spaces that are self-supportive and productive.”

Permaculture as a design approach, she notes, had to earn respectability, in part because it has been seen as a “fringe” or marginal approach. Now, however, would-be permaculturists can take 72-90 hours of training and earn a permaculture design certificate. To date, between 20,000 and 30,000 people have become certified.

That democratizing approach is a key difference between permaculture and other disciplines, Fernandes notes. “These are skills that are meant to be shared, not limited to a small group of experts.”

Design Principles

Some of the design ideas of permaculture challenge modern forms of agriculture. For example, there’s the concept of “no till” planting and soil building that tries to mimic they way healthy soils are created in nature. This is a concept that farmers and gardeners often resist. The science, explored for several years by Australian permaculturist Bill Mollison, suggests that because soils take many, many years to develop their unseen ecosystems, they should not be deeply disturbed with plough and shovel each year. Instead, plants or seeds should be added with minimal disruption.

That’s not to say that creating a permaculture yard is always a low-impact process. But all of the major digging and terraforming happens just once—at the creation of the new landscape. Depending on the site, this process can include removing turf, digging “swales” in hillsides or flat areas, creating raised garden beds, and may include excavating a pond and planting, moving or removing trees. It’s not dainty work, but most of it can be done by hand, often with the help of volunteers.

And all of the work is done with clear goals in mind. First, it maximizes the productivity of land. By adding swales—shallow trenches edged by low hills, for example, you can almost double the surface area for growing—stretching a third of an acre into a half acre. At the same time, swales create microclimates, protected areas that receive more (or less) sun than flat areas, suitable for crops that might not otherwise grow in a given climate zone.

Another way to maximize growing space is to go vertical.

“If you have a south face on a home,” Fernandes says, “and you’re not creating some kind of vertical trellising system for grapes or plums or some other crop, you’re wasting a lot of potential. Also, you want to maximize edge. In nature, it’s at the edges that the most productive stuff happens: the transition between forest and field, marsh and river.”

One way to do that: use scalloped borders on walkways and beds, and gently curving ponds. A straight line has the shortest amount of edge–so it’s the least akin to anything found in nature, and the least productive, especially if growing food is a goal.

Which raises another key “permie” value. Permaculture landscapes support life and give something back—unlike conventional yards that often demand more than they give. In other words, every plant on the property has a role in an ecosystem that must include the residents of the house. That means people-ready food: hardy perennial fruit trees and vegetables (such as asparagus, garlic, kale and rhubarb), herbs, medicinals, and tall or bushy plants for privacy screens. Not all plants are edible of course. Some are intended to build and revitalize soils or attract beneficial insects, birds or other creatures. Beauty isn’t the primary goal, simply an inevitable result.

“One thing people need to understand is that a permaculture landscape might not look impressive for the first three to six years,” says Fernandes. “It’s not like an ornamental landscape where the landscapers come and plop plants in holes the day the house is finished. But when those plantings mature, it’s a garden of Eden—a unique experience like nothing most people have ever seen.”

“With this type of land planning,” she adds, “most of the hard work is done up front. After that, it’s close to self maintaining.”

Experiments in permaculture have achieved some astounding results—which seem to bear out much of the ecological science of the practice. For example. Geoff Lawton has been demonstrating that even desert landscapes can be made fruitful by applying certain permaculture principles.

But people who have converted their residential lots need little convincing. How much can edible stuff can a half-acre city lot really produce? A family in Pasadena says it’s producing over 6000 lbs. of produce a year on just 1/10th of an acre—a figure that includes poultry and eggs – using permaculture among other strategies. A more realistic goal for committed gardeners might be 600 to 1,000 lbs annually on a half-acre lot.

Permaculturists in urban areas are not waiting around for city officials to figure out the benefits of urban farming. For example, the San Francisco permaculture group (www.permaculture-sf.org) calculated how much food could be grown on the city’s unpaved, permeable areas—a total of about 9,000 acres that does not include rooftops or parking lots. Based on the Pasadena project just mentioned, they came up with a rather zealous estimate of 70,000 lbs per acre. They then weighed in average calorie consumption for a human being, to estimate that the city could produce enough food to feed 78,408 people per year. San Francisco’s current population: about 800,000.

Their conclusion: Even permaculture doesn’t have the potential to feed a modern city from within the city limits—unless major infrastructure dismantling takes place. But the alternative—total dependence on remote food sources, offers nothing but bad news. And, most people will choose hope over helplessness.

Positive Energy

That may be permaculture’s most important attribute: its promise of an abundant future, where people can survive whatever changes are coming. It’s a system that’s open to all, that offers security through local collaboration, not guns and private gates. To that end, Lisa Fernandes says, it’s time to take resilience to the next level.

“We mustn’t forget the huge advantages we have in the United States,” she says. “We have such a resource here in our already built environment. We have everything we need—if we can just learn to capture and use all of the resources that are hitting our home sites—the water, the solar energy, the soils.”

Along with permaculture, she says, people need to prepare mentally for the future, by re-localizing where and how they get their energy security and essential goods, and re-skilling (learning how to use their hands again) to be able to grow and preserve food, compost, capture rainfall, and make and repair clothes and household goods.

She acknowledges that most people still have a long, long way to go. But your own homesite is a good place to start.

“Installing a permaculture design typically costs about the same or less as conventional landscaping,” she says. “But once it’s done, the savings in maintenance—not to mention the production of valuable, usable food and herbs quickly begin to pay off. It’s not going to be neat and tidy and manicured like a lawn and a picket fence, but this is about caring for the earth, at the same time caring about yourself.”

resilience

Beat the Bulb Ban: LED Replacement Lamps in a New Light

Last modified on 2012-05-01 13:11:20 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The incandescent ban is here, but LEDs have improved rapidly in the last couple of years and there are now several bulbs that meet Energy Star criteria.

We’ve been hearing for years that “they’re going to ban the incandescent bulb”–is that for real? Starting on January 12, 2012, the Energy and Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) began regulating energy-efficiency standards for 100-watt screw-in light bulbs (also known as Edison or A19 lamps). These bulbs are now required to use 27% less energy, or 72 watts or less, for the same lumen output. Over the next couple of years, 75-, 60-, and 40-watt bulbs will have to have that same 27% reduction. And starting in 2020, EISA ups the ante and will require that most light bulbs be 60%–70% more efficient than today’s incandescent bulbs. The law does not mean incandescent bulbs will be illegal, but it will be a challenge for them to comply. Meanwhile, most LEDs already meet those standards.

Why move to LED replacement lamps?

You’re probably going to to have to switch to LEDs eventually, but there are good reasons to do it now. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency (EPA), which runs the Energy Star program in a partnership with the Department of Energy, replacing one standard incandescent bulb in every home in the U.S. with an Energy Star-qualified bulb–CFL or LED–”would save enough energy to light 3 million homes” annually and prevent 9 billion pounds of greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere. Though more expensive, an LED has a few advantages over a CFL: LEDs are typically more efficacious, they don’t contain mercury, they work well in cold temperatures, and they can be turned on and off repeatedly without affecting the lamp’s lifespan.

Forget watts: Look for lumens

As we move away from incandescent bulbs, we have to stop thinking in terms of “XX watt light bulbs.” Watts simply tell us how much energy a bulb consumes and don’t make sense as a metric for CFLs or LEDs. Lumens, on the other hand, tell us the amount of light produced or how bright it is, and lumens per watt (lpw) gives us the amount of light produced per the amount of energy consumed. Standard incandescent bulbs produce anywhere from 10 to 17 lpw, according to the DOE, so a 60-watt bulb is about 800 lumens; a new Philips EnduraLED produces 940 lumens while consuming only 10 watts, or 94 lpw. New packaging for replacement lamps prominently displays lumen output, estimated annual energy costs, and lifespan. This should make it easier for consumers to find the amount of light they prefer and compare products, but it will take some getting used to, and they might have to calculate lumens per watt on their own.

Look for Energy Star-qualified LEDs

Energy Star lists LED A19 replacement lamps that are “omnidirectional” so they shine light down to illuminate the table or work surface, something many older LED replacement lamps (and some current could not do, and which limited their

usefulness and appeal. Energy Star-qualified lamps also have to undergo third-party LM-79-08 test methods for efficacy and color quality and must meet the following criteria:

A minimum of 50 lpw

A minimum rated life of 25,000 hours while still producing 70% of its original light (the light from LEDs typically fades away rather than the bulb failing catastrophically, so below 70% is considered the end of its service life)

Specific correlated color temperatures of 2700K, 3000K, 3500K, or 4000K (3000K is similar to the warm white color associated with incandescent bulbs–higher color temperature numbers mean “cooler” blue colors)

A power factor greater than 0.70

A color rendering index (CRI ) over 80 (Philip’s L-Prize-winning EnduraLED 60-watt replacement has a CRI of 93)

A minimum three-year warranty

Are we paying more and getting lower quality?

As with early CFLs, the two big complaints about LEDs have been high cost and questionable light quality. Energy Star for LED replacement bulbs has helped lead to significant improvements in light quality, so it is less of a free-for-all in the marketplace (remember the cylinders with hundreds of individual LEDs masquerading as a lamp?). Though some of these products are still quite expensive (Philips’ 940 lumen EnduraLED is about $40), you can buy an Energy Star-qualified 40-watt replacement bulb from Home Depot made by Lighting Science Group for less than $10! And there are rebates available from local utilities and public service boards that can drop the price even further, making LEDs very cost-competitive, especially when you consider their long lifespans.

LEDs are not a panacea–at least not yet

Though LED replacement lamps are improving quickly, the technology still has some challenges to overcome. They still don’t look like an incandescent bulb, and the light from an LED is “different”- after all, there is no burning filament–so it may take time before consumers get used to them. And because LEDs are more like a computer chip than they are like an incandescent light bulb, they are affected by other electronics and wiring, so dimming may not be as smooth, they might flicker, or the color and light quality could change. In most residential application, these problems will be minimal, but in commercial buildings with numerous LEDs and more electronics, the potential for problems increases. Nevertheless, the lighting world has changed forever. So get used to thinking in lumens, and if you want to make the change to an LED replacement lamp you should try one in your home or business and run it through its paces so you know what you are getting. The energy savings will be worth the effort.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Alex Wilson is founder and executive editor of BuildingGreen, Inc., and coeditor of GreenSpec.  Brent Ehrlich is BuildingGreenʼs products editor. Jennifer Atlee is research director at BuildingGreen.

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2008 Building Energy Efficiency Standards Informational Documents

Last modified on 2012-05-01 13:24:27 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

The California Energy Commission publishes resources and background materials for implementation of the 2008 Building Energy Efficiency Standards. Here’s a link to their recently released Cool Roof brochure.

www.rera.com/PDF/coolroof.pdf

cool roof

Wonderful News for Employers with regard to Rest and Meal Breaks

Last modified on 2012-05-02 13:00:27 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

Employee Relations Management’s

H.R. Alert

April 2012

Wonderful News for Employers with regard to Rest and Meal Breaks

As anticipated, the California Supreme Court in Brinker v. Superior Court issued a far reaching decision and set the standards for meal and rest period.  The Court set forth fairly easy-to-follow guidelines for compliance with the law that most employers are already utilizing.  The issue that posed the greatest interest to employers — whether an employer meets its obligations to “provide” a meal period by simply making one available for employees to take – was decided in the employer’s favor.

Please note the Court was only addressing rest and meal period as they affect non-exempt and not exempt employees.

In the past employers were challenged to “enforce” as well as “provide” an uninterrupted meal period.  On occasion employees successfully argued that it was the employer’s responsibility to “police” the meal break to ensure that every employee actually took the required meal period.  It was not acceptable that an employer simply provide for time off from work for the meal period but to actually enforce it.   There were several occasions where I represented employers at the Department of Labor Standards Enforcement where the employer’s rigor with enforcing the meal period came into question.  Suffice to say, the issue was whether the employer fulfilled his or her obligation by “providing “the meal period or whether the “employer had to actually enforce it”.  That has thankfully changed.

The Court made a number of rulings regarding class certification that will not be the subject of this article.

The following is a summary of the of the Court’s orders:

Number of Rest Periods Owed

The Court answered three questions about rest periods:

1. How many rest periods must be provided in a shift,
2. whether the rest period must occur at specific times  within the workday, and,
3. whether the trial court was correct to certify the rest periods claims.

Regarding the number of rest periods the Court stated that a non-exempt employee is entitled to a 10 minute paid rest break for every four hours of work. The exception occurs when the worker’s shift is 3.5 hours or below.  For a shift between 3.5 hours and 6 hours the worker is entitled to one rest period.  For a shift between 6 and 10 hours the worker gets two ten minute paid breaks.  For a shift between 10 and 14 hours the worker gets three paid rest breaks.

Timing of Rest Periods

The Court held that generally the employer should set the rest break near the middle of the four hour block of time, but the employer “may deviate from that preferred course where practical considerations render it unfeasible”.  There is no particular rule the rest period should come before the meal period.

Meal Periods

This is a huge victory for California employers.  The Court stated that non-exempt employees are entitled to a thirty-minute uninterrupted meal break for every five hours of work.  To provide an off-duty meal period consistent with California law means to give the employee 30-minutes where she or he is free to do what she or he wants, whether or not the employee chooses to use the time for work.

“The meal period requirement is satisfied if the employee (1) has at least 30-minutes uninterrupted, (2) is free to leave the premises, and (3) is relieved of all duty for the entire period. Employers must afford employees uninterrupted half-hour periods in which they are relieved of any duty or employer control and are free to come and go as they please”.

The employer cannot coerce or pressure employees to skip their meals.

“The employer must not undermine a formal policy of providing meal breaks by pressuring employees to perform their duties in ways that omit breaks”.

This does not mean that employees who feel that they should not take meal breaks because they have a lot of work to get done have a valid claim (law suit) for meal breaks.  It means you cannot have a phantom policy of meal breaks with the actual practice of pressuring your employees not to take them.

Timing of the Meal Break

There was some concern if you provided the meal break early in the shift you would be obliged to offer a second meal period five hours later.  That didn’t fly.  The Court stated (1) a first meal break must be after no more than five hours of work, and (2) a second meal break must be provided after no more than 10 hours of work.

Summary of New Meal Break Laws

The Court explained that, while California law requires employers to provide employees with meal breaks, it does not compel employers to ensure employees cease all work during such breaks.  The Court held that California law merely requires employers to provide employees with an uninterrupted 30-minute duty-free meal period.  During this period, employees may engage in any activity of their choosing.  As the Court stated: “The employer is not obligated to police meal breaks and ensure no work thereafter is performed”.

Recommendations

1. Although you can enjoy this welcome relief don’t let your guard down.
2. Continue with your policy encouraging employees to take their thirty minute unpaid meal break between the fourth and sixth hour of their eight hour day.
3. Ensure all your non-exempt employees record on their time sheets, time cards on time clocks the following:

• The time they commenced work,
• The time they started their meal break,
• The time the meal break concluded, and finally
• The time they concluded work at the end of their shift or workday.

1. If employees work through their meal period ensure they are compensated including overtime.
2. Do not pressure or coerce your employees to work through their meal period.
3. Similarly, do not insist employees remain on the premises during their meal period.  This is their time and they can do whatever they wish during the meal period.
4. Have your rest and meal period policies clearly defined in your employee handbook.
5. Nothing we have discussed affects exempt employees who are not impacted by these laws.
6. Whose permission should an employee ask to begin his or her meal period?
7. Define whether an employee has a thirty minute or full hour for the meal break.
8. Can an employee waive their meal periods, work through lunch and leave an hour early?
9. Do you have the right to insist an employee have their meal period away from their desk?
10. What happens if an employee answers phones during their meal break?

lunch breaks

Advertise on RERA.com

Last modified on 2012-03-07 15:59:08 GMT. 0 comments. Top.

If you would like to advertise on our website, you can download the advertising form and submit it with your payment.

The cost is $120 per year pro-rated to the end of the year, or $10 per month till the end of  the year.

Download the Application and Rate sheet here.
WHAT YOU GET is your business card or business card size ad listed on the right side of this page, and some other rera.com pages. That ad is then linked to your company’s RERA posting or your own website whichever you prefer. Your company name in the Support Our Sponsors boxes above is also linked to either your company information or website. That means if you click on either item  you are taken to your information. On your company’s page you can add as much detail as you would like such as prices, pictures, specials, etc.

advertise