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News Notes: Big Defamation Award Against Union Tossed Out

The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned a nearly $1 million award to a dry cleaning firm and its owner for allegedly defamatory statements made by a union during a collective bargaining dispute. While meeting to discuss ongoing wage negotiations, the union president informed union members that the company president was hiding money […]

NYC To Require Accommodations for Pregnant Workers

Pregnant employees in New York City will soon be entitled to workplace accommodations, thanks to a bill the city’s council unanimously passed Sept. 24. While the Americans with Disabilities Act requires workplace accommodations for employees with disabilities, it does not consider normal pregnancy a disability. According to the bill, the change was necessary because of […]

Your HR Department Survey 2.0

Last Friday (Oct. 10) we discovered we had some significant technical problems with the survey on Your HR Department that caused us to lose many of your responses. So we’re going to try this again. The survey is the same. We’ve gotten the technical problems resolved. Now we just need you to take the survey […]

Mental Health Parity Act Effective Date Delayed

Update: Mental Health Parity Changes Take Effect January 1, 2010 Congress deferred the effective date of the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 to January 2010 for plans that otherwise would have been covered in 2009. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act amends the Employee […]

Federal government touts increase in employment of people with disabilities

When President Obama signed Executive Order 13548 on July 26, 2010, he specifically set a goal of hiring 100,000 people with disabilities by 2015. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) not only lead federal agencies in the first two quarters of 2012 with 4.2 percent of all new hires being people with disabilities, the agency […]

Wellness Tipping Point—Employees Now Care About Costs

There’s been general agreement that wellness programs are effective at reducing employer healthcare costs, but survey results show that healthcare costs now matter to employees—something that’s been missing up to this point. The survey, the Principal Financial Well-Being Indexsm, covered more than 1,600 employees and retirees at growing businesses with 10-1,000 employees. Released in early […]

Immigration: H-1B Visa Cap Reached for Fiscal Year 2007

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has announced that, as of the end of May 2006, it already received enough H-1B visa petitions to meet and exceed the H-1B visa cap of 64,300 for the 2007 fiscal year (which begins on October 1, 2006). The final date to submit a petition for consideration […]

The Minimum Wage Increase: Our Readers Talk Back!

By BLR Founder and CEO Bob Brady So the minimum wage increase doesn’t matter, eh? Not so, say our readers. Last week, in a column titled “The Minimum Wage Increase: Does it Really Matter?” I took the position that the coming increase in the minimum to $7.25 would have an impact that was, well, minimum. […]