Much has been written about the recent recess appointments made by President Obama (thus, bypassing the Senate approval ordinarily required). This was a tactic also used by President Bush when deemed necessary to push an appointee through when one or two senators had put a mysterious “hold” on a nomination or several of them. The most controversial of Obama’s recess appointments is Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

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A previous post summarizes one of the relatively unknown provisions of the recently enacted health care reform legislation. As noted in that post, there will be other discoveries of provisions that received little attention during the tortured health care debate in Congress. It’s interesting that members of Congress kept talking about how enormous the legislation was (over 2,000 pages) but kept talking about very few provisions.

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The Frontal Cortex blog has a post that’s not designated as HR- or employment-related but should be. It doesn’t relate only to the happiness of employees, but it deals with a subject that has a lot to do with employee happiness: the daily commute. The inherently unpredictable flow of traffic ruins the day — possibly every day. In fact, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert is quoted as saying, “Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day.”

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Though a supporter of health care reform generally, I can’t say that I support the recently enacted legislation in its entirety, because I have no idea what the legislation says in its entirety. Of course, a common objection to the legislation was that no one knows what it (all of it) says. I suspect that’s true of almost every piece of legislation, however.

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Lyndon Johnson had some advice for politicians that applies to just about everybody. Whether you’re an executive, an HR professional, a manager, a supervisor or anyone who has responsibility for dealing with people, meeting with people and trying to persuade them to do something or not to do something, the late President’s words seem to have meaning. If one can’t do what Johnson is talking about, maybe he or she isn’t meant to be a leader of people or even a manager of them. See what you think.

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When I was a teenager, Sam The Sham and The Pharaohs burst onto the scene with their huge hit Wooly Bully. The lyrics were hard to make out and hard to discern even if you made them out. It’s clear that Sam and his Pharaohs weren’t singing about bullies at school or work, but they could have been.

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Being overqualified used to be a reason applicants were given for failing to get a job offer. It was assumed that someone overqualified wouldn’t be happy in the job and would be looking to leave as soon as a more suitable job could be found. It’s finally sinking in that times have changed, if not for the long term, then for a long short term.

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In “Songs for Drella,” Lou Reed and John Cale pay tribute to Andy Warhol with Work. Somebody’s got to bring home the bacon. Somebody’s got to bring home the roast. So the most important thing is work. Work may not be the first thing you think of when Andy Warhol comes to mind, but according to Reed and Cale, all Andy did was “just work.” For those of you who speak French, you’ll enjoy the subtitles on the musical video.

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I’ve done two posts recently (here and here) on the sad saga of child sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. Even if you accept only part of what’s been reported in the media or admitted by the Church, the abuse continued for decades; involved hundreds of priests and thousands of young boys; occurred in every country where the Church is located; and was covered up from the lowest to the highest levels in the Church. It now appears from Church records that Pope Benedict XVI himself, while known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, ignored pleas from his subordinates to defrock an American priest who sexually molested 200 boys in a school for the deaf operated by the Church.

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As everyone knows by now, when Vice President Biden introduced the President just before Obama signed the historic health care reform legislation, he uttered the f-word as he turned the microphone over to his boss. Biden was pumped that the President had achieved victory and got carried away. Besides, the Vice President often speaks before he thinks. Should his boss care?

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In an Administrator’s Letter from the Wage & Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, mortgage loan officers are said to be non-exempt employees under the Fair Labor Standards Act,  instead of exempt employees under the administrative exemption of the FLSA. This letter reverses two previous Administrator Letters on this subject. The new letter is based on the following facts:  

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Do you have pranksters in your workplace? Most employers do. The problem with office pranksters, particularly those in cubicles, is that they go overboard. They don’t have an inner filter to separate appropriate pranks from inappropriate pranks. They think they’re funny, but they’re not. A prank is a difficult form of humor to pull off at work. See what you think about the following examples.

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An earlier post called attention to Pope Benedict XVI’s apology to Catholics in Ireland for decades of child abuse by priests. He didn’t discipline or fire bishops and church leaders who had allowed the abuse to continue and who had covered it up. It’s been reported today that an Irish bishop has resigned and that the Pope has accepted the resignation. There’s little question that the bishop was forced to resign, so is the Pope beginning to walk the talk of his apology?

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The Boston Globe contains an interesting article on a subject that most employers and employees are quite familiar with by now in 2010. Has anyone not received some form of diversity training at work? The question raised by the Globe is whether it does any good. Critics say it doesn’t. Supporters say it does. Perhaps the real answer is that we don’t know, based on recent research examined by the Globe.

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Manpower Employment Blawg advises that new COBRA model notices are available and provides link to find notices. Thanks MEB.