Employment Issues and the 2012 Election

With Election Day fast approaching, let’s address a few last-minute employment issues leading up to the election.

The final jobs report before Election Day is in, and it’s showing that the unemployment rate is at 7.9 percent.

GOP challenger Mitt Romney pounced on that figure, stating that it was lower than what then-candidate Barack Obama promised when he ran for election back in 2008.

But as President Obama’s team points out, he took office in one of the worst periods of unemployment and since then, the nation has seen 25 consecutive months of job growth.

Obamacare is another hot point in the upcoming election. While Romney promises to repeal Obamacare, many are pointing out how that would effect employment of disabled persons. Without Obamacare, writes the left-leaning magazine The Nation, many disabled workers would lose out on Medicaid if they were to land a job, since Medicaid has income restrictions. But in jobs that don’t have health insurance, we’re looking at no medical coverage for these disabled workers, according to The Nation.

Moving on to more practical aspects of Election Day, are you planning to leave the office to cast your ballot on Tuesday?

Know that your employer can’t stop you from voting. And your employer can’t try to persuade you to vote a certain way.

It’s against the law — Pennsylvania law, to be precise.

Under state law, it’s a criminal violation to stop an employee from voting. The same can be said for an employer’s attempts to coerce an employee to vote a certain way, writes Pennsylvania attorney Samuel J. Cortes.

Many states have laws allowing the employees to take time off to vote. Pennsylvania has no such law, but the laws appear to be more concerned about coercing an employee to vote in a particular way.

In the presidential election, the polls are tight leading up to Tuesday. It’s hard to say who will win, but unemployment was certainly a hot topic in this campaign.

Happy voting!

Related Resources:

• Find a Philadelphia Employment Lawyer (FindLaw)
• Binders Full of Women: Did Romney Mean ‘Affirmative Action’? (FindLaw’s Philadelphia Employment Law News)
• Know Your Rights: State Laws on Employee Time Off to Vote (AFL-CIO)