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The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) has published final rules regarding compliance with the nondiscrimination provisions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) for wellness programs. The rules will be effective on the first day of the plan year beginning on or after July 1, 2007. For calendar year […]
We earlier reported on a California appeals court ruling thata class action alleging that Sav-On Drug Stores misclassified managers as exempt from overtime couldn’t proceed. The court’s reasoning was that whether or not each manager was properly classified as exempt was an issue that was individual to each store and therefore couldn’t bedecided on a […]
An employee discovers her boss is having a sexual relationship with a co-worker. Then, when the co-worker gets favorable treatment, including questionable promotions, the employee comes after you, charging that the boss’s favoritism amounted to sex discrimination and created a hostile work environment. Open-and-shut case for the employee? Maybe not, according to a new decision.
The HR Hero Line you are seeing today isn’t exactly what we had planned. But by noon on what is now being called “Bloody Monday,” we knew we needed to address the fallout from so many job cut announcements, which were then followed on Tuesday by possibly the worst unemployment report from the U.S. Bureau […]
As the government fulfills its promise to create an essential benefit package, employers can be forgiven for thinking the government’s putting a competitor plan out there to lure plan members away from employer-sponsored plans. And it is tempting for them to just say: “Fine! You asked for it; no more funding health benefits!” But paradoxically […]
The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would hear arguments in a case involving sexually explicit text messages sent by employees using their employer-provided pagers. The issue for the court is whether the employer violated its employees’ privacy rights by reading the messages. The case involved several police officers with the Ontario, California, […]
A special statewide election will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2005. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. The California Elections Code requires employers in the private and public sectors to allow employees to take paid time off to vote if they don’t have sufficient time outside of work hours, but […]
Rooting out the more subtle types of FMLA abuse takes diligence and tracking leave patterns can be time consuming and expensive. Here are 10 tips for employers. Click here to read more
California employers can breathe a deep sigh of relief: The California Supreme Court has just ruled that workers who use medical marijuana aren’t protected by the state’s disability bias law or the Compassionate Use Act.
Employers may soon be able to screen out applicants who have a history of stealing. A private database called TheftNet lists workers who have admitted or been convicted of workplace theft or shoplifting from participating employers. Although TheftNet is currently available only to very large companies, plans are under way to make the information accessible […]