The "official" rate of unemployment in California is a sparkling 4.7%, and according to state labor experts, the job market is tightening. But how many more people would be employed if it weren't so darned expensive to hire and keep new people on the payroll? How expensive?  Here are the real-world consequences of government policies that make it so easy for employees to sue their companies for a variety of imaginary offenses. Coyote Blog: California is a uniquely difficult place for companies trying to actually employ people rather than robots.   Owning a business in that state, you could be forgiven that the legislation actually embarked on a program to explicitly punish companies for hiring people.  The state has spent the last ten or twenty years defining a myriad of micro offenses employees for which  may sue employers and make large recoveries -- everything from having to work through lunch to having the wrong chair and...(Read Full Post)