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Compensation and Benefits: Know What Your Competitors Are Up To

In a tight labor market, you need to stay aware of what compensation and benefits your competitors are offering. Here’s a way to do it … at the click of a mouse. Yesterday’s Daily Advisor detailed a study by the Charlton Consulting Group on how employees greatly underestimate the cost of benefits to employers. The […]

Hot List: New York Times Bestselling Hardcover Business Books

The following is a list of the bestselling hardcover business books as ranked by the New York Times with data from Nielsen BookScan on July 18. 1. Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner. This account of the Wall Street implosion highlights individuals who […]

Timing of Backaches Justifies Firing, Negates FLMA and ADA Claims

Some people complain about “rheumatism,” backaches and other physical ills when the weather shifts. For a Southwest Airlines employee, his backaches — and resulting requests for Family and Medical Act (FMLA) leave — seemed to follow the same shift as holidays and vacation time. Southwest determined that this was not the whim of nature but […]

Hit and Run

I ran across a number of things this week that I thought were worthy of comment.  Instead of choosing one, I thought I would try to get them all in. In the “It’s About Time” category, the board of BP negotiated the departure of Tony Hayward as CEO of the oil company and replaced him […]

How Employers Can Participate in National Mentor Month

January 2013 is National Mentoring Month, which is the perfect time for employers that may be interested in establishing an external mentoring program to learn about how they can get started and enjoy the benefits of providing employee-mentors while helping their local community. In this video, BLR interviews an expert on internal and external business […]

7th Circuit: Successor Must Pay $500K for Previous Owner’s FLSA Violations

A successor employer could not escape paying a $500,000 damages award for the previous owner’s Fair Labor Standards Act violations.  The case, Teed et al. v. Thomas & Betts Power Solutions LLC, Nos. 12-2440, 12-3029 (7th Cir. March 26, 2013), involved a tricky analysis of whether the purchaser of a business could be held responsible […]

10 CA Hospitals Fined for Medical Errors

Because of serious medical mistakes at 10 California hospitals, eight patients died, an adolescent lost vision, and a tenth patient sustained severe bleeding from the nose due to medical errors, according to the California Department of Public Health.

News Note: Retaliation, Sexual Harassment Claims Rise

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that the number of cases involving sexual harassment and retaliation is increasing. Retaliationclaims, the fastest-growing type of complaint filed with the EEOC, have gone up more than 77% between 1992 and 1999. A total of 11,096 retaliation charges were filed in 1992, but by 1999, the number had jumped […]

News Flash: LAPD Can Fire Unqualified Officer Who Was Hired By Mistake

When Eugene Quinn applied to be a Los Angeles police officer, he failed the medical exam because of a hearing impairment. But due to a clerical error, he was told to report for further training exams, which he passed. Quinn graduated from the police academy and was assigned to patrol duty before his hearing problem […]