Photo of Jennifer L. Gokenbach

Jennifer L. Gokenbach is the founder and principal attorney of Gokenbach Law LLC, a woman-owned management-side labor and employment defense firm in Denver, Colorado. Gokenbach Law is the exclusive Colorado firm for Worklaw® Network, an international network of boutique law firms who practice labor and employment law on behalf of employers with offices in 34 offices in 27 states and in Australia, Canada, China, Europe, India, and Mexico.

I heard a statistic today that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is expecting over 100,000 charges in FY2011 – the highest number ever in its history.  Dealing with an increasing number of discrimination, wage & hour, and other employment-related claims is, unfortunately, the state of affairs in the workplace for some time to come.   

Birthday.jpgIn 1938, during the Great Depression, Congress enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to:

“aid the unprotected, unorganized, and lowest paid of the nation’s working population; that is those employees who lacked sufficient bargaining power to secure for themselves a minimum subsistence wage.”

At that time, we had an industrial workforce and most jobs

Your Weight in Gold.jpgOn September 17, 2010, jetBlue named Joanna Geraghty as its first Chief People Officer (CPO).  There is some speculation that the timing of the Steven Slater incident may have helped fuel this decision.  But still, jetBlue has taken the leap and appears to be at the forefront of companies appointing CPOs, which are anything but the norm.  

Today, human resource