Author: yriselve

Social Justice

How Housebound People can Access Financial Planning Expertise

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Financial-Advisor

There are many people who are housebound for some reason. They may be physically disabled or care for a person who is, or they may have little children and no support, so they just can’t go out to attend a meeting with a financial planner. So how can these people access a financial advisor such as andep to get the kind of financial planning they need?

They can access the help they need in several ways. If they have a computer and internet connection they can go online to find the person they need. They can research the websites they find and then they’ll know if the person provides the following: –

  • Forms to fill in to help the planner know what their goals and needs are.
  • An offer to work with them via telephone or
  • The ability to do video calls
  • They can also contact each other by email or snail mail, although the latter is rather too slow for exchanging important information.
  • They may find a financial advisor who is willing to make a house call. They could do this just once, then use the above means of keeping in contact once the initial meeting is done.

This is ideal for someone who is physically disabled but has nothing wrong with them mentally. They are likely to be in need of financial planning help, since they have health needs that are more costly than most other people’s. Once they have good advice from a financial planner they will be more able to take control of their finances. This will give them a feeling of self worth, something that many disabled people lack. (more…)

Employment Law

How to Handle Unfair Dismissal

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How to Handle Unfair Dismissal

If you have recently lost your job and don’t know why, or think that you’ve been dismissed unfairly, there are things you can do about it. You may want to consult employment lawyers who will be able to tell you if you have any hope of getting your job back or of being compensated for wrongful dismissal.

What is unfair dismissal

It is important to understand exactly what unfair dismissal is. The definition may be different depending on what Australian state you are in. In Western Australia unfair dismissal is said to occur when an employee’s dismissal is oppressive, harsh or unfair. An example of this would be when there was no cause for the dismissal, or if the reason for the dismissal was not sufficient to have that result.

It could be that the employee was alleged to have performed poorly, accused of some misconduct, or that dismissal was inappropriate to the offence. Or it could be that the employee was given no chance to explain their alleged action or to prove it was false.

Who can make a claim for unfair dismissal?

In Western Australia, you have to make a legal claim through Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission (WAIRC). The person who can make a claim must:

  • Have been employed under the state system
  • Have earned less than $155,800 per year if not employed under an award
  • Have been dismissed or forced to resign

What happens then?

Legal advisors will advise you to make a claim within 28 days if possible. It costs $50 to lodge a complaint and you will have to provide certain documents. The WAIRC will look into the claim and if they are satisfied you have a case, will set a date for a conciliation conference. This potentially avoids going to court, a lengthy and costly procedure.

The meetings are usually held in Perth or at certain regional centres and each person has to meet their own costs to get there. Notification of dates and times will be given via snail mail, or in the case of urgency, by telephone or email.

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Employment Law

How to Keep on Top of Employment Issues

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Keep on Top of Employment Issues

Once, employees had no recourse for anything that happened to them in their workplace, whether it was an accident or some kind of unfair treatment from their employers. These days things are different. If something goes wrong that seems impossible to fix, you can quickly consult with employment lawyers and find out what your rights are and what the best way is to go about rectifying your situation.

Simply knowing what your rights are goes a long way towards ensuring you are treated properly, paid the right wage and are given safe and comfortable working conditions. While many Australian employees do know a lot about their rights, some do not for various reasons. Even lack of experience can lead them to suffering injustice unnecessarily.

Then there are people from other countries who work here and may not know what they are entitled to as employees. They don’t fully understand the language, so even if they have an internet connection and know how to do research, reading it does not always explain the answer to their problem in a way they can understand.

This enables unscrupulous employees to make things more to their own advantage and be unfair to their employees, even to the extent of going outside the law in some cases. In other cases it may simply be a matter of carelessness or miscommunication that has caused the problem.

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Employment Law

With New Protections Tied Up in the Courts, Home Health Care Workers Aren’t Waiting Around

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Home-Health-Care-Workers

From New York to California, domestic workers are fighting to make new rights a reality.

Almost two years after the Obama administration extended historic labor protections to the nation’s 1.79 million home healthcare workers, those new rights remain in limbo. In September 2013, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced plans to amend a longstanding regulation that has excluded them from earning the federal minimum wage, overtime pay, and compensation for travel on the job. For home healthcare workers in the United States—a group that is nearly 90 percent female—this move marked a significant step towards setting a floor of decent labor standards.

But the rule-change, which was set to go into effect on January 1st, now faces a challenge in federal court, and critics say state legislators are using the ongoing litigation as an excuse to avoid implementing the new protections. At the same time, given that most home healthcare workers are paid through Medicaid and Medicare—two underfunded public programs—many also worry that states will respond to the rule-change by curtailing consumers’ access to quality care. Activists across the country are working to pressure their lawmakers to reckon with these new standards and avoid potential calamity.

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Family Law

Childcare Options for Parents Who Both Work

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Childcare-Options

When you have children but need to go back to work it’s important to work out the right kind of care for them. Whether you have toddlers or your children are of primary school age, it’s important to know they will be cared for properly while you are at work. Sometimes, grandparents can care for them, but often they too, work, or else they are too feeble to manage to care for a lively toddler all day.  Here are some other childcare options.

Home day care

This is when a woman, often a mother herself, cares for other children in her own home. It is good because there is a family atmosphere and the groups are small, meaning your child will get the attention they need. Government procedures are in place for payment and to ensure the carer is a suitable person. However, if they are of a different culture to you, it is wise to make sure that this will not have a negative impact on your child. They pick up different habits very easily.

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Employment Law

Constructive Dismissal and What To Do About It

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Constructive-Dismissal

If you are wondering whether your dismissal from work would be classed as unfair dismissal or constructive dismissal it is wise to consult good lawyers by checking out Lawyers List because not every state has the same laws. In Western Australia, the term constructive dismissal can be used to describe either one of two scenarios: –

  • You have been asked to resign by your employer for whatever reason. If you resigned at the request of your employer it is classed as constructive dismissal.
  • If you have been forced to resign due to the actions or conduct of your employer. For instance, the employer may have breached the terms of the employment contract, or even told you that the terms would be breached so you had no choice but to resign.

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Property Law

10 Ways a Property Lawyer can Help You

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Property-Lawyer

Whenever you have any kind of dealings with property, it is essential to consult with property lawyers to ensure everything goes smoothly. There are a great many laws involving property to protect buyers, sellers and anyone else who has anything at all to do with property. Not only will the right legal advice keep you out of trouble, it will ensure your dealings are successful, no matter what kind they are.

The right legal advice can be found in all manner of property dealings such as:

  • Developments and subdivisions
  • Sales and acquisitions
  • Retail and commercial leasing
  • Contracts for construction or anything else
  • Covenants, easements and any other encumbrances
  • Landlord/tenant disputes
  • Notices for default
  • Court or tribunal legal proceedings
  • Contracts
  • Advice to do with loan or mortgage documents
  • Problems with contaminated land and more

If you purchase a business or property of any kind there are many different kinds of laws that may apply to that particular purchase that would be different for another kind of property purchase. The laws are fairly complicated in order to cover every possible situation and possibility. It is the work of property lawyers to know all about these laws so they can advise their clients properly.

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Employment Law

Raising Core Standards: Increase the Minimum Wage

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Raising-Core-Standards

Families cannot make ends meet at minimum wage jobs. Over the last forty years, the real value of the federal minimum wage has fallen by nearly 30%. If it had kept pace with inflation, it would be $10.58, instead of $7.25. The tipped minimum wage has been frozen at $2.13 an hour for 21 years; servers have 3 times the poverty rate of the rest of the US workforce. The public overwhelmingly supports raising the minimum wage; many believe it would help the economy by putting money in the hands of families who will spend it. Organizing efforts have helped pass minimum wage increases in dozens of states and scores of cities, providing a raise not only to minimum wage workers, but boosting wages across the low-wage job market. Higher city and state minimum wage levels also help create momentum for increasing the federal minimum; a proposed federal increase to $9.80 would raise the wages of 28 million workers in the US, boost GDP by over $25 billion and support the creation of over 100,000 jobs*

*Estimates by the Economic Policy Institute quoted in NELP’s Issue Brief New Minimum Wage Bills Would Accelerate Recovery and Improve Job Quality, August 2012.

Commercial Law

What to do with Uncollected Goods in Business

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When you are in business you’ll soon find out that there are laws about everything, which is good because it saves you having to work out what to do in certain circumstances and if you are not sure about the law for that circumstance, commercial lawyers will soon be able to tell you. Legal help will ensure your business runs like a well-oiled machine and has the best chance of success.

One question you may have is what to do about uncollected goods that are taking up storage room. Now before you call in Brilliance Removalists Perth there are a few things you should know. For instance, a business that does car repairs may be left with a car that has been repaired, but the owner has not come to collect it and you can’t contact them. That car is taking up valuable space in the workshop, so what can you do? Or if your business is a dry cleaners, what can you do with clothing that has never been picked up? What if you own a caravan park and campers have gone off and left their tent or other accessories behind?

This can be a big nuisance since you can’t dump the stuff; it belongs to someone else and what if they eventually did come for it?  You can’t sell it off because again, it doesn’t belong to you, so that would be illegal. So how can you dispose of these goods legally? This might be something of a quandary, but luckily there are laws about such matters.

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Employment Law

Fast Food Workers in 236 Cities Pull Off Largest Strikes Yet as Other Low-wage Workers Join Fight

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Fast-Food-Workers

A hand-lettered placard, reading “McDonald’s: Stop Fooling Around, $15 and a union,” caught the spirit of the crowd of at least 3,000 protestors in Chicago for a march to a McDonald’s restaurant in the downtown Loop area connected to the Chicago Board of Trade. In 236 cities in the U.S. and roughly 100 more around the world from Sao Paulo to New Zealand and from Glasgow to Tokyo, according to protest spokespeople, fast food and other low-wage workers joined together to pressure employers like McDonald’s to raise their workers’ pay.

Organizers claimed that it was the largest protest by low-wage workers in U.S. history. And it may very well rank as one of the broadest global worker protests ever undertaken against multinational corporations—one reinforced by recent investigations and lawsuits in Europe against the company for violations of labor, health, safety, tax and other laws.