last day

Today is the last day of the conference.

There are going to be two sets of workshops this morning, and the conference ends around Noon. Spoke with Jon Baird from the statewide non-LSC program in New Hampshire at breakfast about advocacy issues.

I am right now in a workshop called "Representing low-wage workers in employment law cases."

Sharon Dietrich from Community Legal Services in Philadelphia spoke first. They have an excellent employment law program. Interestingly, the majority of their referrals come from the criminal records division in Phila. These involve former prisoners who have been denied employment opportunities because of their criminal records. They are also handling a lot of occupational license cases, Family Medical Leave Act cases, and so on.

She does very few employment discrimination cases, as they tend to demand a lot of resources and the results are usually very limited. They did handle one case in which a person involved in a welfare-to-work program had a worker say to her, "if you don't sleep with me, I will get you sanctioned from welfare." They got a good settlement on this case.

Wireless is pretty sketchy in this room, so I'll quickly post this and get out.

Dave