Has your H-1B employer promised you a wage that is based on a percentage of project work? If so, read on, as this article discusses some common issues and important considerations for H-1B workers offered percentage-based pay.  This includes the importance of having documentation of what the employer promised.

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If you get in a workplace dispute, watch your emotions carefully.  If you lose your cool, you will likely lose your job.

People understandably feel strong emotions when confronted with strong emotions– say if a boss or HR rep is treating you condenscendingly, sarcastically, or worse, is yelling at you.  If these things happen, it is hard not to let emotions well up and take over.  But that is exactly what you have to prevent.

If management loses their cool, they keep their jobs.  You do not make the decision whether your managers keep their jobs, when they lost their cool in dealing with you.  But if you lose YOUR cool in dealing with them, then they can choose whether to label your actions “insubordination” or “misconduct”, etc.  They can choose to fire you.

These are simple concepts.  But the minute a worker gets into a dispute, he is quick to forget the logical concepts above, and likely to lose his cool.  Don’t lose your cool.  It will do you no good, and will likely cost you your job.

Blog author-attorney Michael Brown, who represents John Kroner in the case of John Kroner v. Oneida Seven Generations Corporation (Appeal No. 2010AP002533), conducted argument before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.   The issues before the Supreme Court concern the Brown County Circuit Court’s decision to transfer the case to the Oneida Tribal Judicial System, and whether that decision was appropriate under Wisconsin’s tribal transfer statute (Wis. Stat. 801.54) and other law concerning tribal jurisdiction.

Video and audio recordings of the parties’ oral arguments are available here at the Wisconsin Eye website.

Many employees engaged in employment disputes believe that the truth will set them free.  That once the employer, or the legal system, finds out the employee is factually correct or “in the right,” then everything will work out in the employee’s favor.

This view, while understandable, is flat wrong.  More often than not, the truth does not set an employee free from their dispute.

Consider this.  Say a given person is diagnosed with cancer.  In most instances, such a person would probably (1) recognize he was in a severe situation; (2) seek the assistance of a professional (e.g. doctor, etc.); (3) undertake steps to best deal with the situation (e.g. treatment); and (4) recognize that those steps would improve the ODDS of a successful outcome, but would not be a guarantee.  Accordingly, the person would recognize the situation to be one that involved risk, and that required careful attention to how it was managed.

All of the same factors apply in a legal dispute.  The unfairness, or untruth, of your situation will not cause matters to resolve in your favor. There is risk involved with your situation, however right you may be, and how your situation works out depends in large part on the (careful) steps you take, and a number of factors involved.

The truth is just one factor, one variable, in a legal dispute.  Other variables include, but are not limited to: what other witnesses will say (i.e. their “truths” asserted), what documentation supports your case, the employer’s level of wealth and leverage, the legal resources available (e.g. whether you can get an attorney, whether a legal claim exists or doesn’t exist for your situation, however unfair, etc.), the timing of your matter (e.g. whether you are beyond a deadline), the particular legal authority you’re dealing with (e.g. the particular unemployment claims adjudicator, judge, jury) and so on.

I don’t write all this to be pessimistic.  Often, employees DO have good legal claims and successful outcomes in employment disputes.

However, if you hold the mistaken assumption that the truth will set you free, and you ACT based on that assumption– for example, if you give your employer or an unemployment adjudicator an earful about how “right” you are– you will find out the hard way how insufficient the truth is in the employment-law world.

I am an attorney, and every so often, a new potential client will email me, and will do so using their employment email address.  When this happens, often the person’s email will contain negative information about his or her employer, or other information the person would not want the employer’s management to read.

Please know this: most employers can, and will, access employees’ emails sent from their work email accounts. Even if your employer has “never” done this so far, and you think they never will, please know if you later file a legal dispute (or the employer thinks you may), the employer will likely become motivated to comb through your emails at that point.

You can avoid risks by simply doing this: if you email an attorney for your own personal purposes, use your personal (non-work) email account.