Question One
You are the Manager of a local catering business in your specific state. The company, as it is very small, does not have an employee handbook nor has one ever been considered.
As it is so small, every employee knows the most intimate details about everyone else's personal life.
A male former employee has privately told some of the employees that he is gay and has decided to marry his "life partner" in Toronto in June, since "Gay Marriages" are legal there.
He has applied for a job with the local YMCA as a youth event co-ordinator. He has listed you as a reference.
When the Personnel Director of the Y calls up about the reference, the person answering the phone tells them that you are out, that you will call him back but states in passing that, by the way, the former employee "has a limp wrist."
She later tells you that you received a message from the Y about the former employee.
When you call them back, the personnel manager asks, among other issues, what did the receptionist mean about the problem with the former employee's wrist?
What do you tell the Manager? Why?
Do you take any other steps in connection with this matter? Why?
Question 2:
Your company, which is reimbursing you for your education at the UoPhx, has learned that you have just completed a course on Employment Law this term and that you have had some discussions about employees and independent contractors.
The owner asks you to draft some guidelines to use in connection with a determination as to who are true "independent contractors" working with the company.
Please draft the memo to him.
He asks you then to advise him what to do with the people who do not fit the prerequisites as set forth in your memo, especially since the company has not been paying the relevant taxes and appropriate benefits for these individuals for many years.
What do you tell him? Why?