Free Republic

Excerpt from agenda of an upcoming webinar: An employee now living and working from home in Indiana would be subject to Indiana wage-hour laws even if the employee used to work in Illinois and the employer is still located in Illinois. Overtime rules, minimum wage rates, and permitted deductions from paychecks, even pay stub requirements are governed by where the employee is physically performing the work. The same applies to garnishments for child support and creditors.

I’ve telecommuted for over 30 years, which was a choice I made once home computers and the internet enabled me to establish a virtual law office. However, there’s a huge difference between individuals and small offices making lifestyle and economic choices and the lockdown’s brute force transition from an office-place economy to a telecommuting economy. The former is an organic workplace diversification; the latter is the breakdown of the commercial real estate marketplace with unfathomable consequences for the American economy. The climate changistas have long dreamed of a virtual business environment, one in which people in white-collar professions work from...

Despite the troubling and ever-increasing number of COVID-19 cases in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams is urging corporations and financial institutions to end their reliance on telecommuting and bring their employees back to work. He says the city’s economic health depends on it,

Jesus Torres can see a lot from his perch in the cab of a tanker truck. Cars with blown tires on the side of the pothole-scarred roads. Overturned tankers on exit ramps curved too sharply for large modern trucks to handle. And more often than not, red tail lights snaking into the distance. “They need to add more lanes to all the highways,” he said on a recent morning on Interstate 270 just after leaving the Phillips 66 terminal in Commerce City. Far too often, Torres said, accidents on this highway through Colorado’s industrial center will cause long delays that...

As vaccinations and relaxed health guidelines make returning to the office a reality for more companies, there seems to be a disconnect between managers and their workers over remote work.A good example of this is a recent op-ed written by the CEO of a Washington, D.C., magazine that suggested workers could lose benefits like health care if they insist on continuing to work remotely as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes. The staff reacted by refusing to publish for a day. While the CEO later apologized, she isn’t alone in appearing to bungle the transition back to the office after over a...

Billionaire bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach, the CEO of $135 billion DoubleLine Capital, sees the potential for a "wave of more higher-end unemployment' hitting white-collar workers making more than $100,000 per year as employers increasingly question the value these employees bring. In 11 weeks, more than 42 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance as the COVID-19 pandemic wrecked the economy. The bulk of these job losses hit lower-income households the hardest. "A lot of times it's not the earthquake, it's the fire," Gundlach said on a webcast for the DoubleLine Total Return Bond Fund (DBLTX), later adding that he could "easily...

It might seem like the glorious era of remote work is upon us, driven by a pandemic push. Zoom! Slack! Who needs the office? The promise of uncompromised productivity paired with freedom is alluring. I’m a behavioral scientist, though, so color me skeptical. While software can ostensibly replicate the features of an office, there are some underlying behavioral tricks that physical offices have mastered. We may not want to discard them so quickly. Let’s start in a not-so-obvious place: habits. People often complain that they can’t start new habits. “I have tried but I just can’t seem to [INSERT: exercise,...

The only thing stopping many from working remotely until now was their bosses’ belief that working in an office is better for the bottom line. That belief is now being put to the test. The coronavirus outbreak is disrupting nearly every facet of American life. Many of these changes are temporary and will be forgotten as soon as the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic subsides — but not all.Changes rippling through daily life right now will present, for the first time, an alternative to the normal way of doing things, and some will be improvements. One bright spot in this medical...

Working from home certainly seems to be increasing in popularity, and it’s not hard to see why. Not only does it mean you can stay in your pajamas, but you’ll also save money in gas and — perhaps the best part — no actual co-workers you have to pretend to like. Dozens of companies are jumping on the stay-at-home bandwagon, like Xerox, Philips and even The Disney Store. While many of these jobs are in customer service, some are for things you probably didn’t know you could do from home — like teaching. Qkids is looking for college students, teachers,...

It seems too good to be true: Companies that pay big but let you never commute to the office again. But there are work-from-home jobs that pay six figures — and let you work wherever you want. The site Remote.co, which lists work-from-home job openings, rounded up seven positions that had active job listings as of May 29, and offer salaries of $100,000 or more, according to PayScale data. (Sometimes companies calculate pay based on where you live, to balance out with the cost of living, while others pay based on their main office location.) All of the positions are...

If you've always wanted to work for Apple, but have ambivalent feelings about pants, you might have just found your dream job. Apple has put out the call for more than 60 "At Home" advisors and managers—customer service and support roles that let people work out of their house. "From your own home, you’ll be [people's] human connection to Apple: friendly, thoughtful, and real," the job listing reads. "You’ll answer questions about our products and services, enriching customers’ lives by helping them access the wonder they’ve come to expect from Apple. And every time you save someone’s day, you’ll be...

Ryan Heenan used to make $30,000 a year as a preschool music teacher. Now he makes $30,000 a month producing jingles and videos through a website caller Fiverr -- and he does so from the comfort of his home in Orange County, California. Heenan is part of an explosion in home-based work opportunities occurring thanks to the Internet. Consumer reporters such as myself used to struggle to offer people legitimate work-at-home options. In fact, most of our stories on the subject were about work-at-home scams. But now there are all sorts of solid opportunities to make a living in your...

International Business Machines is giving thousands of its remote workers in the U.S. a choice this week: Abandon your home workspaces and relocate to a regional office -- or leave the company. The 105-year-old technology giant is quietly dismantling its popular decades-old remote work program to bring employees back into offices, a move it says will improve collaboration and accelerate the pace of work. The changes comes as IBM copes with 20 consecutive quarters of falling revenue and rising shareholder ire over Chief Executive Ginni Rometty's pay package. The company won't say how many of its 380,000 employees are affected...

Looking for a full-time job that allows you to work completely from the comfort of your own home? Global hotel chain The Hilton is looking to hire full-time "remote reservation sales associates" in 29 states, including Wisconsin. According to the Hilton's website, employees in this position will be required to: • Answer the telephone and greet prospective guests in a friendly manner to create a superior guest experience • Listen to and acknowledge callers, to ensure understanding of inquiries, and to deliver personalized travel solutions • Utilize solution-oriented sales skills to maximize revenue for our hotels and business partners worldwide...

EXCLUSIVE: Eight Environmental Protection Agency employees who racked up a total of more than ten years’ worth of paid “administrative leave” between 2011 and 2014 -- valued at more than $1,096,000 -- apparently did so because they were involved in “cases of alleged serious misconduct,” Fox News has learned. In a memorandum sent from EPA’s acting assistant administrator, Nanci E. Gelb, to EPA’s inspector general, Arthur Elkins -- a draft also was given to Fox News -- the agency has revealed that at least three of the affected employees have now left EPA. All of the eight “were or are...

The very notion of telecommuting has been present in the mainstream white-collar workplace now for well over a decade. Yet for one of the worst offenders in padding operating and travel expenses, namely the U.S. Congress, the notion of mentioning telecommuting seems to be downright sinful. One would think that these calls for a "virtual Congress" come from watchdog groups of various political winds. But shockingly enough, one of Congress' very own -- House member Steve Pearce of New Mexico (R) -- is leading the push to bring our legislative branch full circle into the 21st century.

You aren’t imagining things – your job has followed you home. The fastest growing segment of home office workers is people regularly bringing home work with them, according to research firm IDC. Technology advances such as ubiquitous broadband and low-cost notebook PCs and smart phones are making it hard for workers to leave their jobs behind at day’s end, says IDC analyst Justin Jaffe.

It’s a stocking stuffer many federal workers in the Capital region have been anticipating for years – the authorization and ability to work for the government from home. On Nov. 18, the House of Representatives by a bipartisan vote of 254-152 adopted the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, a bill that improves and expands teleworking in federal agencies by requiring them to establish a policy under which eligible government employees are approved to telecommute. The bill also instructs federal agencies to notify their workers of their eligibility to telework, and it establishes a Telework Managing Officer to develop and implement...

If the flu pandemic becomes as severe as some experts fear, it could end up infecting the Internet. That's the conclusion of the General Accountability Office, which issued a report this week that warned about a potential meltdown of the Web. If the H1N1 flu strain spreads widely enough, keeping millions of workers and students confined to their homes, the Internet's infrastructure could be overwhelmed by people logging in from home. That surge in telecommuting, the report concluded, could slow down local networks to the point of gridlock. According to the Department of Homeland Security, "increased demand during a severe...

Imagine what a different world we might live in if members of Congress rarely traveled outside their district or state and conducted the “peoples’ business” from a high-tech room in their home office that enabled them to debate, sit on committee, question witnesses and vote via teleconferencing. This idea for Congress and state legislatures is as old as the integrated circuit.