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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Scott McPealy who wrote (10389)	7/10/1998 9:09:00 AM
From: alydar	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 64865

Provide this article to your fellow IT and co-workers and ask them what they think of MSFT. Not only do they want to control the computer market they are trying to enact legislation that can effect millions of hard working Americans. Microsoft Advocates Tax Bill to Deny Benefits to MillionsOf American Employees, Says Bendich, Stobaugh & Strong SEATTLE, July 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft advocates enactment of a tax bill by October which would permit any employer to deprive any full-time, permanent employee of any employee benefit, according to David Stobaugh, a partner in the three-member Seattle law firm of Bendich, Stobaugh & Strong. The bill has key support in the U.S. House of Representatives. Stobaugh's firm represents Microsoft employees who have won a Federal lawsuit in which Microsoft was found to have illegally denied employee benefits to thousands of its full-time, permanent employees. Microsoft achieved this result by placing these employees on the payrolls of temp staffing firms, a practice known as "payrolling." Stobaugh said the bill, H.R. 1891, "is being sold to Congress as a way to expand the benefits small businesses provide their employees. In fact," he said, "the bill would accomplish the opposite result. It would allow employers of all sizes to deny all benefits to their full-time, permanent employees by making 'payrolling' legal." Stobaugh said "'payrolling' is the procedure used by Microsoft to assign 'employees' to a 'temp' or 'staffing' agency for 'payroll' purposes. The 'payrolling' agency then arranges to have those employees formally re-assigned back to the employer to perform the employer's normal and regular work. The 'payrolling' agency reports that it is the employer, when in fact it is not." In 1996 and 1997, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals twice rejected Microsoft's arguments against providing certain employee benefits to its misclassified "temporary" employees. On January 26, 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Microsoft's request to overturn the appellate court's ruling. Instead the high court sent the case back to Federal district court in Seattle to decide the extent of Microsoft's obligation to misclassified employees, thus handing Microsoft its first major defeat in the Federal courts. Microsoft employs at least 5,400 "PermaTemps," employees who work at full- time, permanent jobs but are called temporary and are paid through temp and staffing firms to make it look as if they are not Microsoft employees. Microsoft uses this procedure to try to avoid paying these employees' benefits, which other Microsoft employees enjoy, by claiming that they are not Microsoft employees. About 30 percent of Microsoft's employees are "PermaTemps," whom Microsoft refuses to recognize as its employees despite the Federal court rulings to the contrary. In a new development, Microsoft announced last week that, effective July 1, 1998, it will curtail compensation to its "temporary" employees still further by forcing all of them to take a 31-day leave without pay every 12 months. "This new policy is an effort by Microsoft to give the appearance that its 'temporary' employees legally qualify as temporary under the law," Stobaugh said. "It won't work," he added, "because it is yet another attempt by Microsoft to circumvent Federal court rulings against its illegal employment practices." One Microsoft employee, when learning of the forced 31-day leave policy said, "I have four kids. I can't afford to take a month off work. Here we are already with no paid vacation and no paid sick leave and now they want us to take 31 days unpaid. That's unbelievable, especially for someone who has worked for Microsoft since 1983." Stobaugh observed, "It is extremely odd that one of the world's richest companies headed by the world's richest man is unwilling to provide normal employee benefits for 30 percent of the Microsoft workforce." Bendich, Stobaugh & Strong is urging Congress to conduct thorough, balanced hearings on H.R. 1891 and to investigate Microsoft's 31-day forced leave policy. "I have to believe that Congress won't repeal 40 years of tax law requiring broad coverage and nondiscrimination in employee benefit plans -- at least not without finding out that this is just what the Microsoft bill would actually do," he said. SOURCE Bendich, Stobaugh & Strong CO: Bendich, Stobaugh & Strong; Microsoft ST: District of Columbia, Washington IN: CPR SU: LEG EXE LBR 07/09/98 15:08 EDT prnewswire.com