Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
A new federal law now in effect says that if you offer mental health benefits, they must have the same aggregate lifetime and annual limits as medical benefits. The law applies to employers with 50 or more employees. There’s an exemption for employerswho can show the parity requirements will increase their costsby more than 1%. […]
Many times a supervisor faces serious obstacles (real or imagined) in the effective leadership of his or her department. Here are some of the excuses supervisors commonly given along with some solutions: Employees are people with certain specific functions to perform, but they are not machines—they’re people with feelings and emotions. People like to be […]
When Professional Risk Management acquired Applied Risk Management, the companies’ agreement provided for all active Applied employees to automatically be transferred to Professional without a break in health benefits coverage. But workers on medical, disability or other extended leave weren’t transferred until they returned to active duty, and they consequently lost health coverage until they […]
For the first time in over 25 years, the U.S. Department of Labor has issued proposed rules overhauling the system for determining which employees are exempt from overtime under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. The proposed rules change the types of job duties workers must perform to qualify for exemption from overtime as well […]
The state Industrial Welfare Commission has approved a 50-cent increase in the minimum wage to $6.25 per hour, effective Jan. 1, 2001. Another 50-cent increase will take effect Jan. 1, 2002, boosting the hourly minimum to $6.75. The change will also raise the minimum monthly salary that must be earned to qualify as exempt employees. […]
The new law provides a short-term replacement for the current 30-year Treasury bond rate, which is currently used as the benchmark rate for pension funding liabilities. Some employers, unions, and workers expressed concerns about using the Treasury bond rate because it artificially inflates a plan’s funding liabilities. Congress enacted a temporary fix in March 2002 […]
The first year of employer disclosures made under the new U.S. Securities Exchange Commission disclosure rules for executive compensation reveals an approximate threefold increase in the value of executive perks. Under the new rules, employers must disclose perks totaling $10,000 or more; previously, the disclosure threshold was $50,000. This causes concern for executives as many […]
Whenever there’s a major power shift in government, it’s time to look at employment law again … and especially at federal-state conflicts. Just over two weeks and counting. Who’s counting? The Democratic Party, of course, anxiously awaiting the day … January 4th … that their dozen-year exile from control of Congress ends. When power shifts […]
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employees who complain of pay discrimination under Title VII, the federal antibias law, must file a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) within 180 days of the discriminatory pay-setting decision, rather than within 180 days of the employee’s last paycheck. This decision was good news for […]
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the National Labor Relations Board erred when it found BE&K Construction Co. guilty of unfair labor practices for suing several unions to stop their campaign against the company. BE&K sued after the unions picketed and distributed leaflets to force the company to build a power plant using only […]