What’s your five? A question for my readers and fellow bloggers.

As a member of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s Employment Law Committee, I was asked to respond to the following questions:

What would you say the top 5 labor & employment issues are that HR professionals and employers (large and small) would like to know more about or are struggling with in this economy?

What can be changed/done to make such labor & employment issues less onerous for employers?

Here’s my list:

1. Job losses, job creation, and managing workforces to ensure, as best as possible, as much work as possible for as many people.

2. The risk of increased unionization in the face proposed federal legislation and a down economy.

3. Layoffs and the litigation risks that flow from them.

4. The threat and proliferation of wage and hour litigation.

5. Rising health care costs.

Figuring out what can be done to fix these problems is a much harder question to answer. Any program designed to aid employers has to start and end with training and education. Being proactive is the best measure to guard against these potential problems.

To my readers and fellow bloggers, if you had to list the top 5 labor and employment issues facing employers in 2009, what would they be? Perhaps more importantly, what can be done to limit or temper these issues for businesses? I’m very interested in what everyone has to say. Please comment. If you post on your own blog, please email a link. I’d like to update this post next week with everyone’s thoughts.

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Presented by Kohrman Jackson & Krantz, with offices in Cleveland and Columbus.

For more information, contact Jon Hyman, a partner in our Labor & Employment group, at (216) 736-7226 or jth@kjk.com.