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News Notes: Telephone Company Will Pay $25 Million To Settle Pregnancy Discrimination Claims

Pacific Bell has agreed to pay $25 million to settle charges that it didn’t credit pregnancy leave toward an employee’s service when calculating retirement benefits. As many as 10,000 women who took leave before 1979, when Congress passed the federal law banning pregnancy discrimination, may share in the settlement. The class action suit was filed […]

Questions and Answers on the New FMLA Regulations

This content was originally published in April 2009. For the latest FMLA regulation changes, visit our FMLA article archives or try our practical FMLA compliance guide. With the new FMLA regulations taking effect, we noticed that many readers had questions on exactly how to comply with the new requirements for family military leave. We thought […]

Two Big Age Bias Settlements—and 3 Lawsuit Prevention Tips

Several new age bias settlements have hit the California headlines. Electronics retailer Best Buy will pay $17,500 to settle a lawsuit filed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of a 68-year-old job applicant who contended he was denied employment because of his age. According to the suit, Reinhold Schouweiler was rejected for a […]

Plan Sponsors Might Have to Report Lump-sum Pay Offers

Pension plan sponsors that offer to “cash out or annuitize benefits” for former employees would have to report this to the U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the agency has proposed. In a routine information-collection change request to the Office of Management and Budget posted Sept. 23 (79 Fed. Reg. 56831), PBGC said it intends to […]

Democrats Introduce the Employee Free Choice Act

The Democrats blazed ahead into battle today (March 10) by introducing the much-anticipated Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) in both houses of Congress. EFCA, which has been the subject of countless debates, is a controversial bill that would allow a majority of employees to form a union by signing card-check petitions. Under the Employee Free […]

HRDA News Extra: How the Federal Minimum Wage Increase Will Affect You

Because of interactions with state law, the federal minimum wage increase, which takes effect July 24, will have different effects on the various states. BLR Editor Sean Dean prepared the following state-by-state analysis for the subscription website, HR.BLR.com. We’re happy to bring it to HRDA readers as well. After years of debate, President Bush finally […]

Exercise Caution When Hiring Teams

In yesterday’s Advisor, we discussed the idea of hiring entire teams instead of individuals. We outlined some of the possible benefits of doing so including increased likelihood of collaboration and less time to full productivity. Today, we’re taking a look at some of the potential drawbacks of this hiring method.

More Investment Advice from Fiduciaries Deemed Trustworthy by DOL

Retirement plan investors will save between $5 billion and $13 billion annually, thanks to new exceptions to DOL’s prohibited transaction rules, DOL estimates. The DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) opened the door to allowing fiduciaries to offer investment advice in a final rule published to become effective Dec. 27, 2011. DOL estimates this new rule […]

Taming Tyrants: An ‘Essential Function’ for Managers?

Today we continue our look at taming TOTs—Terrible Office Tyrants—and we’ll take a look at an invaluable source for prewritten job descriptions. (Should all HR job descriptions list taming TOTs as an "essential function"?) Dealing with tyrant bosses is "a little like parenting minus the diapers and spitting up," says Lynn Taylor, whose tips were […]