Why You Shouldn’t Use Homeless People to Fill Job Vacancies [e132]
The guys end the week by recapping the story on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and a local non-profit thatpaid homeless people with food and shelter to work concessions at games. Then they answer, "How risky is it to discuss my company's IP with job applicants?" Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right, welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener of our podcast, can send in to ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. My name is Nasir Pasha. Welcome to our show. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. Also, welcome. NASIR: Well, you just said welcome because I said welcome but, truly, I’m the welcoming person of the two. MATT: I can accept that. Right now, as we’re recording, it’s raining here in San Diego. There’s a 100 percent chance of rain today which is pretty unheard of. I can’t remember that happening in a long time. NASIR: I know, I love the rain, but San Diego freaks out in the rain. That’s the only problem with that. MATT: I’m going to try to stay off the roads as much as possible because people don’t know how to drive in the rain down here. NASIR: Everyone, too, is like, “Oh, it’s raining outside. I think we’ll take this, we’ll count this as our snow day,” right? “I’m going to stay home.” MATT: Yeah, people kind of pack it in if it’s raining. So, we will see. But let’s go to a place where it rains sometimes – Tampa Bay. NASIR: There was a doubt. It rains a lot over there actually, that’s true. MATT: Yeah. So, Tampa Bay, and a football story, too. We haven’t talked about football in a while, right? Like, in the sweet spot of college football, the regular season’s over. The Bowl games are going to start here shortly. NFL season’s winding down – a few weeks left. NASIR: Yeah, San Diego had a bad loss last week, unfortunately, and they have a hard game against the Broncos this weekend, I think. MATT: Oh, yeah. Who’d they lose to last week? Oh, New England, that’s right. Yeah, that was a tough one. NASIR: It was the Patriots. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: Patriots. Did you say Eagles? No, Patriots, right? MATT: No, I said New England. NASIR: Oh, New England. I thought you said Eagles. MATT: No. NASIR: No, yeah, actually, not the New England; it’s the Patriots. MATT: So, Tampa Bay, the Buccaneers have had a bad season, but I guess that’s not only on the field – off the field, too. I guess what they had been doing after investigation was done was they were employing homeless people to work in the concession stands at their games. So, it’s bad enough that they don’t get people to attend the games – which I don’t think they do – but they found homeless people and had them working games which, essentially, is human trafficking, I think. NASIR: Well, okay, you’re correct on that. But the problem is that – by the way, I read this article the same way and I started looking more deep into it and it’s not clear what the facts are but this other company – I believe it’s a church called New Beginnings – only until I started reading what their perspective was that I realized, “Okay. Well, maybe it sounds really bad that you have homeless people that are in your concession stands, but what’s going on is that they are getting paid.” I’m giving you the position of New Beginnings. They are getting paid but they’re getting paid through shelter and food, okay? So, technically, I think a lot of people may still see this as exploitive and things like that, but the question is really, “Are they making a minimum wage out of that?” The federal law does allow you to be paid through food or lodging in lieu of wages under certain circumstances and there’s even special circumstances if the particular workers are in a disenfranchised – I should say and I believe they had a disability. Nonetheless, when you do pay employees in lieu of cash for food and lodging, then there are some other things like, for example, you cannot charge the worker for more than the actual cost.