Employees' Rights

Employment and the law

Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. In a commercial setting, the employer conceives of a productive activity, generally with the intention of creating profits, and the employee contributes labour to the enterprise, usually in return for payment of wages.

Employment also exists in the public, nonprofit and household sectors.

In the United States, the "standard" employment contract is considered to be at-will meaning that the employer and employee are both free to terminate the employment at any time and for any cause, or for no cause at all.

To the extent that employment or the economic equivalent is not universal, unemployment exists.

Employment Law is the branch of the legal profession that deals with employment related issues.

Employment Law exists in many countries, including the USA and the United Kingdom.

Employment law in the U.S. is largely governed by the common law rule of "at will employment", that is, that an employment relationship can be terminated by either party at any time for any reason, including a good reason, a bad reason or no reason at all.

Exceptions to this rule can be found in various federal employment law statutes, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (and amendments), Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Family and Medical Leave Act 0f 1993, and numerous state laws with additional protections. The Fair Labor Standards Act regulates minimum wages and overtime pay for certain employees who work more than 40 hours in a work week.

There is no special employment tribunal in the U.S. Employment law cases are heard in state or federal courts, depending upon the issue, the size of the employer (the Civil Rights Act of 1964, for example, applies only to employers with 15 or more employees), and the litigation strategy of the plaintiff.

Employment wages.

The legal definition of a wage is the amount of money paid for some specified quantity of labor. When expressed with respect to time (usually per hour), it is typically called the legal wage rate, and is specified in pre-tax amounts. It is often the main monetary item upon which the worker and the employer focus when negotiating an employment contract.

Early forms of wages included salt (from which the word salary is derived). In modern English, the word salary tends to be used when referring to employment in which the employee is not paid by the hour.

Depending on the structure and traditions of different economies around the world, wage rates are either primarily market-driven (the USA) or influenced by other factors such as tradition, social structure and seniority, as in Japan.

In the United States, as of 2004, the prevailing wage rate for manual labor might range from $10 up to $70 per-hour, depending on the type of work and its location.

Several countries have enacted a statutory minimum wage rate in an attempt to prevent the supposed exploitation of low-paid workers.

Minimum wage in the United States

The first attempt at establishing a legal minimum wage in the United States came in 1933, when a $.25-per-hour standard was set as part of the National Recovery Act. However, in 1935 the United States Supreme Court declared the National Recovery Act unconstitutional, and the minimum wage was abolished.

The legal minimum wage was re-established in the United States in 1938 (pursuant to the Fair Labor Standards Act), once again at $.25 per hour ($3.22 in 2005 dollars.) It had its highest purchasing value ever in 1968, when it was $1.60/hour ($8.85 in 2005 dollars.)

During his presidency, Bill Clinton gave states the power to set their minimum wages above the federal level. As of 2004, 12 states had done so; and on November 2 of that year two additional states (Florida and Nevada) approved increases in statewide referendums. Some smaller government entities, such as counties and cities, observe legal minimum wages that are higher than the state as a whole; in some cases, the ordinance applies only to businesses that are under contract to the local government itself, while in others — most notably San Francisco — the higher rate is enforced across the board. San Francisco's $8.50-per-hour minimum wage is the highest in the nation.

Many progressive politicians in the United States advocate linking the minimum wage to the Consumer Price Index, thereby producing small annual increases rather than the larger hikes that tend to be adopted when legislation to do so is passed. The vast majority of conservatives oppose this, but a few actually favor it, on the grounds that this would stop their opponents from, in their view, periodically exploiting the issue.

Some cite the behavior of the U.S. Congress in defeating increases in the federal minimum wage, currently $10,300 per year ($5.15 per hour for a 40 hour work week based on 50 work weeks annually) for the last nine years (from 1996 to 2005) at the same time as repeatedly acting to increase their own annual salary by $28,500 to $162,000 over the last few years as an example of hypocrisy.

This is a list of the legal minimum wages in each state of the USA and the District of Columbia for jobs covered by federal minimum wage laws [1]. Other jobs, often ones which earn tips or in small companies, are often subject to lower minimums.

In addition, some counties and/or cities within states may observe a higher minimum wage than the rest of the state in which they are located; sometimes this higher wage will apply only to businesses that are under contract to the local government itself, while in other cases the higher minimum will be enforced across the board.

Legal minimum wage

* Federal $5.15 (29 USC Sec. 206)

* Alabama No state minimum wage law.

* Alaska $7.15

* Arizona No state minimum wage law.

* Arkansas $5.15

* California $6.75 ($8.50 in San Francisco)

* Colorado $5.15

* Connecticut $7.10

* Delaware $6.15

* District of Columbia $6.60 (Rising to $7.00 on January 1, 2006)

* Florida $6.15 (as of mid-2005; thereafter rises with inflation)

* Georgia $5.15

* Hawaii $6.25

* Idaho $5.15

* Illinois $6.50

* Indiana $5.15

* Iowa $5.15

* Kansas $2.65

* Kentucky $5.15

* Louisiana No state minimum wage law.

* Maine $6.35

* Maryland $5.15

* Massachusetts $6.75

* Michigan $5.15

* Minnesota $5.15 (increasing to $6.15 on August 1, 2005)

* Mississippi $5.15

* Missouri $5.15

* Montana $5.15

* Nebraska $5.15

* Nevada $5.15 (2004 referendum approved to create $6.15 minimum wage; requires reapproval in 2006 to become law)

* New Hampshire $5.15

* New Jersey $5.15 (Increases to $6.15 in October 2005, and $7.15 in October 2006)

* New Mexico $5.15

* New York $6.00 (Rising to $6.75 on January 1, 2006, and to $7.15 on January 1, 2007)

* North Carolina $5.15

* North Dakota $5.15

* Ohio $4.25

* Oklahoma $5.15 ($2.00 for work not covered by federal minimum wage) (OK Statutes 40-197.5)

* Oregon $7.25 (with future increases based on the inflation rate)

* Pennsylvania $5.15

* Rhode Island $6.75

* South Carolina $5.15

* South Dakota $5.15

* Tennessee $5.15

* Texas $5.15

* Utah $5.15

* Vermont $7.00

* Virginia $5.15

* Washington $7.35 (with future increases linked to inflation, as per Revised Code of Washington Sec. 49.46.020) [2]

* West Virginia $5.15

* Wisconsin $5.70 (As of June, 2005)

* Wyoming $5.15

Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993.

The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (Public Law 103-3, enacted February 5, 1993) was one of the first major new laws enacted by United States President Bill Clinton in his first term, fulfilling a campaign promise. The law recognizes the growing needs of balancing family and work obligations and promises numerous protections to workers. Some of these protections include:

* Twelve (12) workweeks of leave per twelve (12) months for various reasons such as:

* Caring for a newborn child

* Handling adoption issues

* Caring for a sick child or family member

* Being physically unable to perform the worker's job

* Restoration of the same position upon return to work. If the same position is unavailable, the employer must provide the worker with a position that is equal in pay, benefits, and level.

* Protection of employee benefits even while on leave. An employer must return all rights that the employee received before going on leave.

* Protection of the employee to not have their rights under the Leave Act taken away by an employer.

Generally, the Act ensures that all workers are able to take extended leaves of absence from work to handle family issues or illness without fear of being terminated from their jobs by their employers or being forced into a lower job upon their return.

The leave guaranteed by the act is unpaid, and is only available to those working for employers with 50 or more employees within a 75 mile radius. The act also applies to all U.S. government employees and to state employees, though litigation under the [Eleventh Amendment to the United States Constitution] has left the latter in doubt. In addition, an employee must have worked for the company at least 12 months and 1,250 hours in those 12 months. The U.S. Code cite is 29 U.S.C. sec. 2601.

Equal Opportunity

Equal opportunity is a descriptive term for an approach intended to give equal access to an environment or benefits, such as education, employment, health care, or social welfare to all, often with emphasis on members of various social groups which might have at some time suffered from discrimination. This can involve the hiring of workers and other such practices. Social groupings generally emphasized in such a way are those delineated by aspects of gender, race, or religion.

Equal opportunity practices that are race-blind or gender-blind may be distinguished from practices that involve or require affirmative action or reverse discrimination. The United States federal government and various state and local governments require affirmative action in terms of governmental hiring and contracting; many other countries make such action illegal.

The method of providing equal opportunity, and the likelihood that such a state of equality is impossible are aspects of the controversial nature of the concept of "Equal opportunity".

Harassment on the job.

Harassment refers to a wide spectrum of offensive behavior. When the term is used in a legal sense it refers to behaviours that are found threatening or disturbing, and beyond those that are sanctioned by society. In societies which support free speech, only the more repetitive, persistent and untruthful types of speech qualify legally as harassment. sexual harassment refers to persistent and unwanted sexual advances, typically in the workplace, where the consequences of refusing are potentially very disadvantaging to the victim.

Both because the term is used in common english, and because where the term is defined by law, the law varies by jurisdiction, it is difficult to provide any exact definition that is accepted everywhere. In some cultures, for instance, simply stating a political opinion can be seen as unwarranted and a deliberate attempt to intimidate - in a totalitarian society any such statement could be interpreted as an attempt to involve someone in rebel activity or implicate them in same, with the implication that if they refuse, they are putting their own life in danger. More usually, some label such as "anti-social" or related to treason is used to label such behaviour - it being treated as an offense against the state not the person. This resembles the use of psychiatry to imprison dissidents which is common in many countries. Another example is that under some versions of Islamic Law merely insulting Islam is considered to be a harassment of all believers, and in Japan insulting any faith is usually considered taboo, and has legal sanctions. There are also extreme and self-serving definitions employed by anti-defamation groups, and also more mainstream groups like NOW. Because of these variations, there is no way even within one society to provide a truly neutral definition of harassment.

Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is harassment of a sexual nature, typically in the workplace or other setting where raising objections or refusing may have negative consequences. In American employment law, it is any unwelcome sexual advance or conduct on the job, having the effect of making the workplace intimidating, hostile or offensive. Sexual harassment is considered a form of illegal discrimination.

The definition of the phrase Sexual Harassment can be broad and controversial, depending on each individual's opinion of what harassment is. While typical sexual harassment behaviour usually includes unwanted touching of a co-worker's private parts, leud comments, talk about gender superiority, sexual jokes, etc., etc., some companies have reported that they have had to fire employees (after a co-worker has complained of sexual harassment) for such actions as telling the complaining co-worker how good he or she looks for that co-worker's date with another person, or for simply handing what seemed, to the fired employee, to be just a harmless complement.

Instances

Sexual harassment can occur in a number of ways, such as:

* The harasser can be the victim's supervisor, a client, a co-worker, a teacher or professor, a schoolmate, or a stranger.

* The victim does not have to be the person directly harassed but can be anyone who finds the behavior offensive and is affected by it.

* While adverse effects on the victim are common, this does not have to be the case for the behavior to be unlawful.

* The victim can be male or female. The harasser does not have to be of the opposite sex.

* The harasser's behavior must be unwelcome.

* The harasser may be completely unaware that their behavior is offensive or constitutes sexual harassment, or they may be completely unaware that their actions could be unlawful.

Definitions

Two specific legal definitions of sexual harassment have been defined:

* quid pro quo (Latin: something for something)

* hostile work environment

The concept of sexual harassment has both colloquial and legal meanings. Many more people have experienced sexual harassment than have a solid legal case against the accused. For many businesses, preventing sexual harassment, and defending its managerial employees from sexual harassment charges, have become key goals of legal decision-making. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has pointed out that sexual harassment is not a freestanding tort, but is only, in its legal sense, a subcategory of employment discrimination.

Prima Facie Case for Sexual Harassment

To establish a prima facie case for sexual harassment, you must show that:

There were unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature when

1. Submission to such conduct was made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual's employment,

2. Submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual was used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual, or

3. Such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment.

Prima Facie for Sexual Harassment, Hostile Environment

To establish a prima facie case for hostile work environment sexual harassment, the alleged victim must prove:

1. He or she suffered intentional discrimination because of his/her sex.

2. The discrimination was pervasive and regular.

3. The discrimination detrimentally affected him or her.

4. The discrimination would detrimentally affect a reasonable person of the same sex.

5. Management knew about the harassment, or should have known, and did nothing to stop it.

Prima Facie for Retaliation

To establish a prima facie case of retaliation, a person must show by a preponderance of evidence that

1. The person engaged in a protected activity known to the employer.

2. The employer thereafter subjected the complaining party to an adverse decision.

3. There was a causal link between the protected activity and adverse employment decision.

Protected activities usually encompass making discrimination and harassment activities known to management, participating in Managing Diversity programs, assisting another employee with a discrimination complaint and other similar activities.

Hiring & Firing.

Hiring

A job interview is a process in which a potential employee is evaluated by an employer for prospective employment in their firm.

In North America, employment equity laws forbid discrimination based on a number of classes, such as race, gender, age, sexual orientation, marital status and others. Asking questions about these protected areas in a job interview is considered discriminatory, and constitutes an illegal hiring practice. Asking questions that touch on these areas, such as "Are you willing to travel/relocate?" (possibly affected by marital status) or "When did you graduate from school?" (indicative of age) is still usually possible.

Firing

An individual can face termination of employment, or job loss, for one of many reasons.

The most drastic termination of employment is involuntary termination, in its most severe form known as "firing", "sacking", "canning", or "shit-canning". A less severe form is to be laid off or "downsized", which is usually not strictly related to personal performance but economic cycles or the company's need to restructure itself.

In a postmodern risk economy, such as that in United States, a large proportion of workers will be laid off at some time in their life, and often not for reasons related to performance or ethics.

Firing an employee is expensive and risky in that firings require extensive documentation (in the event of a wrongful-termination lawsuit), and because fired employees may sue their former employers, disclose trade secrets to competitors, or expose illegal practices. Finally, in the United States, unemployment benefits are financed by companies, and a firm's unemployment costs increase with each worker laid off or fired.

Types of termination:

Forced resignations

In addition to the risks and costs of firing an employee, firing a high-profile individual such as a school superintendent, an executive, or a public official often leads to rumor and factionalism; people who sympathized with the fired employee will be drawn against the person responsible. To avoid this, and to allow the dismissed employee to "save face" in a more "graceful" exit, the employer will often ask the employee to resign "voluntarily" from his or her position. If the employee chooses not to resign, the processes necessary to fire him or her will be pursued, and the employee will usually be fired. It thus becomes unclear whether or not the resignation was forced or voluntary, and this opaqueness benefits both parties.

High-profile individuals, when forced to resign from a job, will often claim that they resigned over "creative differences" or "to spend more time with my family".

Changes of conditions

When Expression Center had gotten too big and still SUCKED they began laying off staff.. Firms that wish for an employee to exit on his or her own accord, but do not wish to pursue firing or forced resignation, may degrade the employee's working conditions, hoping that he or she will leave "voluntarily". The employee may be moved to a different geographical location, assigned to an undesirable shift, given too few hours if part time, demoted, or relegated to a menial task, or assigned to work in uncomfortable conditions. Other forms of manipulation may be used, such as being unfairly hostile to the employee, and punishing him or her for things that are deliberately overlooked with other employees.

Such tactics may amount to constructive dismissal, which is illegal in some jurisdictions.

Layoffs and furloughs

Finally, termination of employment can happen as a result of layoffs, also known as "downsizing" or "redundancy", which are not firings. A laid-off employee's job is terminated and not re-filled, because the company wishes to reduce its size or operations, not for performance-related reasons. In rare cases, laid-off employees are re-hired by their respective companies, though by this time they have usually found new jobs.

Labor Law.

United States labor law is a heterogeneous collection of state and federal laws. Federal law not only sets the standards that govern workers' rights to organize in the private sector, but overrides most state and local laws that attempt to regulate this area. Federal law also provides more limited rights for employees of the federal government. These federal laws do not, on the other hand, apply to employees of state and local governments, agricultural workers or domestic employees; any statutory protections those workers have derive from state law.

The pattern is even more mixed in the area of wages and working conditions. Federal law establishes minimum wages and overtime rights for most workers in the private and public sectors; state and local laws may provide more expansive rights, Similarly, federal law provides minimum workplace safety standards, but allows the states to take over those responsibilities and to provide more stringent standards.

Finally, both federal and state laws protect workers from employment discrimination. In most areas these two bodies of law overlap; as an example, federal law permits state to enact their own statutes barring discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin and age, so long as the state law does not provide less protections than federal law would. Federal law, on the other hand, preempts most state statutes that would bar employers from discriminating against employees to prevent them from obtaining pensions or other benefits or retaliating against them for asserting those rights.

Regulation of unions and organizing

The National Labor Relations Act gives private sector workers the right to choose whether they wish to be represented by a union and establishes the National Labor Relations Board to hold elections for that purpose. As originally enacted in 1935, the NLRA, then also known as "the Wagner Act", makes it illegal for employers to discriminate against workers because of their union membership or retaliate against them for engaging in organizing campaigns or other "concerted activities", to form "company unions", or to refuse to engage in collective bargaining with the union that represented their employees.

The Taft-Hartley Act, passed in 1947, loosened some of the restrictions on employers, changed NLRB election procedures, and added a number of new limitations on unions. The Act, among other things, prohibits jurisdictional strikes and secondary boycotts by unions, outlaws the "closed shop" and authorizes individual states to pass "right to work laws", regulates pension and other benefit plans established by unions and provides that federal courts have jurisdiction to enforce collective bargaining agreements.

The United States Congress subsequently tightened those restrictions on unions in the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, which also regulates the internal affairs of all private sector unions, providing for minimum standards for unions' internal disciplinary proceedings, federal oversight for unions' elections of their own officers, and fiduciary standards for union officers' use of union funds. Congress has since expanded the NLRB's jurisdiction to health care institutions, with unique rules governing organizing and strikes against those employers.

The NLRA does not, on the other hand, cover governmental employees, with the exception of employees of the United States Postal Service, a quasi-public entity. The Federal Labor Relations Act provides for much more limited rights for employees of the federal government; Congress has, moreover, excluded a number of these workers in the United States Department of Homeland Security and elsewhere from even these limited protections

Federal law does not provide employees of state and local governments with the right to organize or engage in union activities, except to the extent that the United States Constitution protects their rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association. The Constitution provides even less protection for governmental employees' right to engage in collective bargaining: while it bars public employers from retaliating against employees for forming a union, it does not require those employers to recognize that union, much less bargain with it.

Most states provide public employees with limited statutory protections; a few permit public employees to strike in support of their demands in some circumstances. Some states, however, particularly in the South, make it illegal for a governmental entity to enter into a collective bargaining agreement with a union.

The NLRA does not cover agricultural or domestic employees. A few states have enacted labor laws similar to the NLRA covering farm workers.

Finally, the NLRA does not cover employees in the railroad and airline industries. Those workers are covered by the Railway Labor Act, first passed in 1926, then amended in 1936 to cover airline employees. The RLA creates a wholly different structure for resolving labor disputes, requiring bargaining under indirect governmental supervision and permitting strikes only in limited circumstances.

The Norris-LaGuardia Act of 1932 outlawed the issuance of injunctions in labor disputes by federal courts. While the Act does not prevent state courts from issuing injunctions, it ended what some observers called "government by injunction", in which the federal courts used injunctions to prevent unions from striking, organizing and, in some cases, even talking to workers or entering certain parts of a state. The Act also led, indirectly, to the end of the use of anti-trust law to outlaw strikes by unions. Roughly half the states have enacted their own version of the Norris-LaGuardia Act.

For the most part the NLRA and RLA displace state laws that attempt to regulate the right to organize, to strike and to engage in collective bargaining. The NLRB has exclusive jurisdiction to determine whether an employer has engaged in an unfair labor practice and to decide what remedies should be provided. States and local governments can, on the other hand, impose requirements when acting as market participants, such as requiring that all contractors sign a project labor agreement to avoid strikes when building a public works project, that they could not if they were attempting to regulate those employers' labor relations directly.

Regulation of wages, benefits and working conditions

The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 establishes minimum wage and overtime rights for most private sector workers, with a number of exemptions and exceptions. Congress amended the Act in 1974 to cover governmental employees, leading to a series of United States Supreme Court decisions in which the Court first held that the law was unconstitutional, then reversed itself to permit the FLSA to cover governmental employees.

The FLSA does not preempt state and local governments from providing greater protections under their own laws. A number of states have enacted higher minimum wages and extended their laws to cover workers who are excluded under the FLSA or to provide rights that federal law ignores. Local governments have also adopted a number of "living wage" laws that require those employers that contract with them to pay higher minimum wages and benefits to their employees. The federal government, along with many state governments, likewise require employers to pay the prevailing wage, which typically reflects the standards established by unions' collective bargaining agreements in the area, to workers on public works projects.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act establishes standards for the funding and operation of pension and health care plans provided by employers to their employees. ERISA preempts most state legislation that attempts to regulate how such plans are administered and, to a great extent, what types of health care coverage they provide. ERISA also preempts state law claims that an employer discriminated against employees in order to prevent them from obtaining the benefits they would have earned otherwise or to retaliate against them for asserting their rights.

The Family and Medical Leave Act, passed in 1993, requires employers to provide workers with twelve weeks of unpaid medical leave and continuing medical benefit coverage in order to attend to certain medical conditions of close relatives or themselves. Many states have comparable statutory provisions; some states have offered greater protections.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act, signed into law in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, creates specific standards for workplace safety. The Act has spawned years of litigation by industry groups that have challenged the standards limiting the amount of permitted exposure to chemicals such as benzene. The Act also provides for protection for "whistleblowers" who complain to governmental authorities about unsafe conditions while allowing workers the right to refuse to work under unsafe conditions in certain circumstances.

The Act allows states to take over the administration of the OSHAct in their jurisdictions, so long as they adopt state laws at least as protective of workers' rights as under federal law. More than half of the states have done so.

Employment discrimination and whistleblowers

While Congress passed laws barring racial discrimination by private employers in 1867, the Supreme Court's decision in the Civil Rights Cases made that Act a dead letter for nearly a century. Congress adopted limited prohibitions against racial discrimination by defense contractors during World War II, but no general prohibition against employment discrimination until it passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employment discrimination on the basis of race, gender, national origin and religion. Congress amended that Act in 1972 to cover governmental employers, in 1981 to outlaw employment discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, and again in the Civil Rights Act of 1991 to overturn a number of decisions by the Supreme Court limiting employees' rights.

Congress has also protected the rights of workers over forty years of age in the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, passed in 1967, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 also provides narrow prohibitions against certain types of employment discrimination based on immigration status.

Title VII encourages states to pass their own anti-discrimination laws; most states outside the South have done so. A number of states and local governments have also enacted statutes that expand on the rights that federal law offers, either by offering greater remedies or broader protections, or have legislated in areas that federal law does not cover, such as discrimination based on sexual orientation or marital status.

The states and the federal government have also enacted a welter of laws to protect whistleblowers; these statutes vary widely in what conduct is protected, what procedures must be followed to enforce the law and what remedies are provided. Public sector employees are also protected from retaliation by their employers for some forms of whistle-blowing activities by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Job security

While most state and federal laws start from the presumption that workers who are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement or an individual employment agreement are "at will" employees who can be fired without notice and for no stated reason, state and federal laws prohibiting discrimination or protecting the right to organize or engage in whistle-blowing activities modify that rule by providing that discharge or other forms of discrimination are illegal if undertaken on grounds specifically prohibited by law. In addition, a number of states have modified the general rule that employment is at will by holding that employees may, under that state's common law, have implied contract rights to fair treatment by their employers.

Public employees in both federal and state government are also typically covered by civil service systems that protect them from unjust discharge. Public employees who have enough rights against unjustified discharge by their employers may also acquire a property right in their jobs, which entitles them in turn to additional protections under the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, better known by its acronym as the WARN Act, requires private sector employers to give sixty days notice of large-scale layoffs and plant closures; it allows a number of exceptions for unforeseen emergencies and other cases. Several states have adopted more stringent requirements of their own.

home

_____________________