ELLN Chair’s Newsletter and Join us at the April ACC Employment & Labor Law Teleconference Meeting Tomorrow!

I have been a little bit tied up with helping address coronavirus issues over the past month, but as we roll into April, it is time for the regular monthly teleconference of the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Employment & Labor Law Network (ELLN), where I am Chair this year.  This post is an open invite to in house counsel who are not already attending our ELLN monthly meetings to join us! My Chair’s newsletter appears after the monthly agenda.

If you are an in-house counsel, and you are not an ACC member or an ELLN member (or even if you are and you haven’t joined us recently), we would love for you to attend our monthly teleconference and join our active community.

Join ACC here: https://www.acc.com/membership/become-a-member

If you haven’t joined our calls recently, or have never heard of ACC or ELLN, now is a great opportunity to check us out. Each month before our meeting, I will post our agenda here and elsewhere in social media as encouragement to join our merry bunch on the first Wednesday (generally) each month. This month’s meeting is at our normal time: 3:00 p.m. EST.

Joining the call is as easy as clicking the big red button below and logging in or registering.

ASSOCIATION OF CORPORATE COUNSEL EMPLOYMENT

& LABOR LAW NETWORK (ELLN) MONTHLY

TELECONFERENCE

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

(3:00 – 4:00 pm Eastern Time)

1. Opening Business
2. Welcome – Doug Hass, ELLN Chair (Lifeway Foods); Darryl Uffelmann (Anheuser Busch); Nikki Odom (3M)
3. Roll – Nikki Odom (3M), Secretary – please report your attendance to ELLC@accglobal.com if you haven’t logged into the webinar.
4. Approval of minutes from the previous monthly meeting on March 4, 2020.

1. Announcements and Staff Report – KJ Forest, ACC
2. Legal Quick Hit Presented by Jackson Lewis P.C. – COVID-19: No Need to Panic—We’ve Got the Cure. Join Jackson Lewis Principal Katharine Weber as she discussed handling the employment law issues caused by COVID-19.  In this LQH we’ll walk you through the most frequently asked questions employers are dealing with right now. We’ll help you strike that balance between protecting your employees and not overstepping the law.  We’ll cover practical questions like –What should you do when an employee tests positive for COVID-19?  When should you allow an employee to return to work after being diagnosed with COVID-19?  How do you navigate your way through the maze of PFML and PSL obligations  provided under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act?  Join us for this engaging and informative session and find out the answers to these and many other COVID-19 questions.
3. Subcommittee Reports
4. Policy
5. Absence and Disability Management
6. Communications and Forums
7. ERISA and Executive Compensation
8. International
9. Labor, Health & Safety
10. Membership
11. Programs
12. Webcasts

• Task Forces
  • InfoPAKs
  • Library Archives
  • Pro Bono
• Other Old/New Business – Comments/Items from Leaders
• Next Teleconference – Wednesday, May 6, 2020, 3:00 p.m. (Eastern Time)
• Adjourn

The Music Quick Pick will be posted tomorrow, but I would like to share my Chair’s newsletter with you:

Hello ELLN Members!

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is our monthly ELLN teleconference at 3 p.m. EDT.  Thank you in advance for attending in this difficult time.  Please be sure to continue to visit our ELLN forum/message board at https://community.acc.com/.  We have had some excellent in-depth discussions about timely coronavirus-related issues, and it is one of the best resources you have available, I promise.  The next best resource? Our Legal Quick Hit this month! It comes from Jackson Lewis Principal Katharine Weber, a member of JL’s coronavirus response team.

Katharine will be discussing up-to-the-hour information that will help you as employers in this rapidly changing situation.  Please take this hour out of your schedules.  You will not find more current and timely information anywhere else.  I promise it will be time well spent.  Katharine will walk you through the most frequently asked questions employers are dealing with right now. She’ll cover practical questions like –What should you do when an employee tests positive for COVID-19?  When should you allow an employee to return to work after being diagnosed with COVID-19?  How do you navigate your way through the maze of PFML and PSL obligations provided under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act?  Please join us for this engaging and informative session and find out the answers to these and many other COVID-19 questions.

Wow, though. What a difference a month makes.  When we got together just four weeks ago in March, I was attending another sensational Corporate Counsel Conference by our Network sponsor, Jackson Lewis, in awe of the keynote speaker, poetic voice artist, storyteller, and inspirational speaker Sekou Andrews; the college basketball season was in the home stretch; the NFL combine had just wrapped up; Joe Biden had just started to claw back into the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Coronavirus…well, it had scarcely reached the shores of the U.S. and had yet to overwhelm much of Europe. 

A lifetime later, we have arrived in April.  I have cooked dinner 584 times in the last month, I’m pretty sure.  I’m also getting a crash course in Common Core.  In all seriousness, though, my fervent hope is that this message finds you healthy, as well those in your life (both professional and personal).  I have grown to truly dislike the phrase “social distancing” over the past month because that is the opposite of what we need right now.  We need physical distancing, but to be more socially engaged than ever.  This global pandemic is something we are all literally going through together, even as our realities, geography, and circumstances diverge. We may be physically distant, but we have so many opportunities to create stories of assistance. More importantly, please reach out if you need help yourself.  I know that many of the stories you read won’t be happy ones in this unhappy time but I hope you can use them to process your own story.  Don’t let the deluge of stories drag you down.  Self-care is #1.

I will give you two happy things to think about.  I have connected with more of my neighbors in the past few weeks than ever before.  People whose names I did not know and whose faces I barely recognized before March now stop and talk like we had known each other for years.  We talk about our dogs, our kids, our current favorite recipes or take out, or just wave and say hello with big smiles on our faces.  We have traded milk, toilet paper, even Ortho Home Defense.  Even for those neighbors I had never met before, every time I see them now, it is as if they are the best friends any of us had on the planet.  That’s a real blessing in this time and I hope that you can find that larger sense of community in your circle.

Thinking back almost 35 years ago, my fifth grade teacher was (among many amazing things) a Ham radio operator with an Advanced license.  I got my Novice license that year, but the real treat was listening to broadcasts from all over the world in our free time during the week.  In the days before the commercial Internet, it opened up the world for us.  I tell you that story to tell you this one.  One of the shows that I listened to back then was on the BBC: Desert Island Discs.  I don’t know if the BBC still broadcasts this on shortwave radio, but they do have a podcast which is where that link will take you! I don’t need to tell you the value of podcasts right now.  The show has been on the air since 1942 and the format has stayed the same: the guest has to name the eight albums they would take with them if they were shipwrecked on a desert island.  The interviews proceed from there, with explanations about the guest’s life and why they chose those albums.  The shows end with them nominating one luxury item and one book they would choose for the island.  The fun part is that the BBC has made its entire, 2000+ show archive available.  You will hear 45-minute interviews from people as diverse as Alfred Hitchock (1959) to Maya Angelou (1987) to Yoko Ono (2007) to Spice Girl Melanie C (2020).  Politicians, poets, sports figures, and many more have graced the show over the years.  The Desert Island Discs website is a trove of its own, listing every guest’s eight records and even the favorite of those eight.  You will undoubtedly find a guest or a show you love, and probably more than one.  Here is a list from the BBC that will get you started if you are looking for notable episodes for your podcast enjoyment.

We are so grateful for everything each of you do for ELLN.  Thank you in advance for your continued participation and your attendance tomorrow.  We appreciate having you and welcome your feedback on how we can make ELLN membership an even better value for you.

Stay healthy!

Doug Hass

Chair, Association of Corporate Counsel Employment and Labor Law Network