In House Rants

Vacations are always too short, and sometimes they don’t seem worth the effort. But they’re important, and we need to take them. I’m sure you appreciate time away with those close to you, and trusting your colleagues (both in house and outside) not to let the place fall apart while you’re flopped on a sandy beach, hiking in a national park or just doing something different.

So today, in the spirit of doing something different, I have not a rant, but praise.

While on vacation the immigration folks resurrected some regulations on what to do when you get a “no match” letter from the Social Security Administration. (Here is a link to the .pdf of the Federal Register listing, if you’re interested: http://tinyurl.com/27u3cw). This is a big deal for us because we have a lot of employees, and an overwhelmed human resources department. Driving to the airport, the news radio station chattered about the “stepped-up enforcement” policy, and something about social security, but my mind was on my vacation. Cue the smart outside counsel.

That evening, while checking voice mail (yes, we do that too while on vacation), one of our outside employment counsel left this short message (I’m paraphrasing): “Hi, I saw your “out of office” email notification, and figured you might not have heard about the new “no match” regs that go into effect September 15th. I know we’ve not talked about this, but I’m putting together a some guidelines for human resources departments on what to do with these letters to be sure you come within the safe harbor. Your company is a little different from most of my other clients, so I’m going to customize it for you guys, and will have it to you next week. If you think it’s useful, let me know. If not, there will be no charge. Hope you’re having a great vacation!”

Stress level at beginning of voice mail: moderate. At the end: low. Having a great vacation? You bet.

One theory says my outside counsel should know my case better than I. He’s scoured the transcripts, grilled the witnesses (ours and theirs) and poked the experts thoroughly. On the other hand, as in house counsel, I know which of my clients and colleagues has the better memory, the better work habits, the troublesome idiosyncrasies and so forth.

No matter what, however, he should know the facts as least as well as I do.

Case in point: Employment counsel prepares and files a position statement with the EEOC. He knocks these off in his sleep, so he figures I don’t need to review it first. I finally get a copy when I have to call and ask, “Say, didn’t we have to file a position statement a while ago in this case?”

He replies, “Oh, didn’t we send that to you? We filed that last week,” and proceeds to blame his secretary. Shortly a copy arrives by email. I glance at it, and immediately see that he identifies our parent company as the employer. Wrong. (The complaining employee works for a subsidiary.) He says the parent company does business in the state. Wrong again — only the subsidiary does.

I mark up the document with the necessary changes and send it back to him with a note asking him to amend the statement, as failing to do so threatens to place our parent company’s multi-million dollar income stream at the mercy of the state’s taxing authority. This would be bad. Apologies abound, promises are made, and another lesson learned. For the both of us. Facts count.