In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, we have a guest blog post from our partner, Janmarie Toker. As an Irish American, St. Patrick’s Day is always an important holiday in my family. It’s a time of celebrating our culture, our heritage, and our resilience. Having grown up in Portland with a large extended Irish family, […]

The nation’s largest retail employer, Walmart, recently announced a policy to increase its base wage to $9.00 an hour this year, 20 percent above Maine’s minimum wage of $7.50. Walmart went one step further and noted that it intends to increase its base pay to at least $10.00 an hour in 2016. This wage increase […]

There was a fascinating op-ed by Paul Krugman this week about the contradiction (he argues) between increased policy focus on expanding and improving education and whether it actually impacts income inequality. His thesis is that while education is essential, it is a non-sequitur as an answer to the decline in value of real wages. I […]

This past weekend, many people exchanged cards, gifts, candy or flowers with their special “valentine.” While Valentine’s Day can be a day to celebrate love and romance, it also brings to mind employment concerns when there are personal relationships between employees at work. Studies show that 46% of professionals believe that work friends are important […]

Questions about union organizing and collective bargaining frequently center on economics. How much will the employees make? What other economic benefits will be provided? This is especially true in the context of unionized employees of the government, where the taxpayers are the ultimate source of the funds required for wages and benefits. This issue is […]

Like many across New England, my family cheered as the Patriots won the Super Bowl this past weekend. It was a great game. However, whether you watched the Super Bowl for the excitement of the sport or simply watch for the commercials, you couldn’t escape the incredible amount of hype about the proper inflation of […]

The first few weeks of each Legislative session are typically slow, while each committee awaits the drafts of the bills it will consider. Most committees fill some of this time with briefings from agencies or outside groups that spend a lot of time in front of them discussing specific legislation. I had an opportunity to […]

At the beginning of every year, I enjoy seeing top ten lists of the previous year; top songs, top places to vacation, top moments in sports. One of the more interesting top ten lists I saw this year was a list of the Top Ten Workers’ Compensation Fraud Cases. As an attorney who handles workers’ […]

During the last week of each year, I engage in a thorough cleaning of my office. Get all email answered. Address all files left out on my desk. Cross things off the white board to-do list. Purge unneeded paper from ongoing files. That kind of thing. In addition, I sort through all the articles I […]

When thinking about achievable New Year’s Resolutions for employees and employers this upcoming year, I remembered an event that took place this fall called “Snark Free Day.” It was an idea conceived by a group of marketing professionals in hopes of building awareness of the increased incivility and snarky behavior all around us. They offered […]