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Miss Utah and the Equal Pay Act

by Boyd Byers She didn’t win the crown, but Miss Utah, Marissa Powell, made the most news during the Miss USA pageant this summer. Her bungled response to a question about the gender pay gap went viral and was seen by millions on the Internet. But her response also generated serious discussion about equal pay.  […]

Employees Hate Each Other? Readers Disagree with Our Suggestion

In his e-pinion on this page a few weeks ago, Dan Oswald suggested that when two employees hate each other, the best course may be keeping the most valuable employee and firing the other one. Most readers didn’t agree. Oswald’s original story is found here in The Oswald Letter. The full text of all the […]

ERISA, FLSA, FMLA Penalties Increased by DOL Rule

By David Slaughter, JD, Senior Legal Editor Maximum penalties for violating many employment and benefits laws were increased, some of them substantially, by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in a departmentwide rule published July 1 (81 Fed. Reg. 43429).

Baby, Baby, Please

Litigation Value: Not much. With collective attentions devoted almost entirely to the miracle of childbirth, the Scranton branch didn’t leave us much to work with tonight. Whereas Dwight Schrute’s senseless destruction of Jim and Pam Halpert’s kitchen cabinetry exposes him to a cornucopia of civil and criminal liabilities in his own right, it’s unlikely that […]

NAIC Delays Vote on Model Law Raising Stop-loss Attachment Points

A proposal to raise specific attachment points in a stop-loss model act to a level that proponents of self-funding say would restrict smaller firms’ ability to self-insure health benefits was delayed after an Aug. 11 debate hosted by the National Association of Insurance Commissioner’s ERISA working group. The working group cited the need to study […]

Survey Reveals Training Needs and Trends

Job skills training was the number one training need identified by participants in a recent survey, and leadership/supervisory skills training is a close second. Also, 22% chose job skills as their top training need, while more than 20% pointed to leadership/supervisory skills. Other training needs include compliance training (12%), safety training (6.5%), better training materials […]

Meeting Today’s Human Capital Challenges

Automation, the need for new skills, an aging workforce, and tightening labor markets are only a few of the human capital challenges organizations face. Add to these a more vocal and empowered workforce, along with a societal call to action, and it becomes apparent there is a need for increased leadership collaboration.

Puzder hearing set for January, Dems defend overtime rules

The Senate has scheduled a January confirmation hearing for President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of labor. Trump’s nomination of Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, was the death knell for the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) new Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime regulations, according to John Husband, a partner at Holland & Hart […]