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A Pennsylvania jury has slapped Wal-Mart with a $78.5 million verdict for failing to pay overtime and requiring employees to work through rest breaks. The class action suit covers 187,000 current and former employees who worked for Wal-Mart between 1997 and 2006.
When a collective bargaining agreement expires, and the union and management haven’t negotiated a new one, an employer must maintain the status quo. This means the employer can’t impose unilateral changes on issues that are considered “mandatory subjects of bargaining,” until a new contract is negotiated or the parties have bargained to impasse. Applying this […]
As the first Monday in October rolled around last week, the U.S. Supreme Court was back on the bench, with new chief justice John G. Roberts.
After four years of exemplary employment, John Byrne, an Avon Products Inc. engineer, began to fall asleep on the job and was fired. It turned out he was suffering from depression. He was quickly hospitalized and recovered. Byrne charged in a lawsuit his termination violated the Family and Medical Leave Act because his abrupt change […]
The U.S. Supreme Court has deferred ruling on a closely watched lawsuit that poses the question of whether an employer can be sued under the federal racketeering and organized crime law for recruiting illegal immigrants with the purpose of suppressing salaries for legal workers.
By Daniel C. Stockford While voters handily reelected both of Maine’s Democratic representatives to the U.S. House of Representatives, a sea change occurred at the state level as the governorship and the legislature apparently have switched from Democratic to Republican control. In a surprisingly close governor’s race, Republican Paul LePage appears to have narrowly held […]
Gov. Davis has signed landmark legislation to reform California’s troubled workers’ compensation system and put a lid on the upward spiral in workers’ comp costs faced by California employers. And now, after having pored over the numbers, the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB) has recommended that the 12 percent pure premium rate increase scheduled […]
The average 401(k) account balance at the end of 2012 was 8.4 percent higher than the year before, but increased assets weren’t typical for all defined contribution plan participants studied, according to a December 2013 brief by the Employee Benefit Research Institute. While equity investments through stock mutual funds comprised the bulk of 401(k) assets […]