Tag: news

Hiring Outlook: Mostly Cloudy for Rest of 2010, HR Pros Say

Many companies are staying put at their current employment levels (40%) or adding only 1-4 jobs (30%) in the last half of 2010, according to results of the Hiring 2010 HR Hero Line survey. Fewer than 15% of the respondents are planning to reduce staffs. Companies that are adding jobs cited a variety of reasons, […]

‘New’ OSHA Uses Old Policy to Make Example of Employers

OSHA is making aggressive use of “egregious violations” to levy large fines and make an example of employers where it considers hazards to have been very serious, including a $16.6 million fine in Connecticut last week and another case in Wisconsin. But the question is whether the violations will hold up in the face of […]

Kagan’s Arrival Unlikely to Shift Supreme Court’s Overall Balance

The U.S. Senate confirmed Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court Thursday in a 63-37 vote. As expected, the senators voted along party lines, with only five Republicans voting to confirm President Barack Obama’s nominee. The final step in Kagan’s road to the Supreme Court will be a White House swearing-in ceremony. Kagan will become […]

HR Feud Survey

HRHero is inviting all our HR and business friends to participate in our new HR Feud survey, where you’ll tell your opinion on employment law and HR issues. Then during lunch at the upcoming Advanced Employment Issues Symposium (AEIS), conference participants can see if they can guess the most popular answers to our survey questions. […]

Departments Release Health Care Reform Regulations on Preventive Care

On Monday, July 19, the Federal Register published interim final regulations from the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and the Treasury requiring new health plans beginning on or after September 23, 2010, to cover certain evidence-based preventive care without cost sharing. In other words, plans cannot charge patients copayments, coinsurance, or […]

Obama Issues Statement Lending Support to Paycheck Fairness Act

This morning, President Barack Obama issued a statement from the White House voicing his support for — and urging Congress to move forward on — the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA). In the statement, the President referred to the bill as a “commonsense bill” that is one of the key recommendations of the Equal Pay Enforcement […]

Solis, Trumka Push for Comprehensive Immigration Reform

Today the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) hosted a live webcast interview with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. During the webcast, both parties made the case for the necessity of comprehensive immigration reform, decrying individual state movements such as the controversial immigration law in Arizona as a means for racial profiling […]

Novartis Enters Settlement Agreement for Remaining Members of Gender Bias Suit

Following a massive $250 million punitive damages verdict from a Manhattan jury, Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis has agreed to settle the remaining claims in a recent gender bias suit. Pending final approval by the district judge, the settlement would be more than $152 million and would cover the remainder of the 5,600 claims filed in […]

OSHA Administrator, Employers Group Spar Over Proposed Changes to OSH Act

A proposal to increase Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) penalties now being considered by Congress will not result in any actual improvements in workplace safety and health, a representative of a coalition of employer groups testified on Tuesday, July 13, before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor. Jonathan Snare […]

Hearing on ‘Radical’ OSHA Change Set for July

“Prison terms of up to 10 years could be imposed on officers and directors of companies that knowingly violate OSHA rules under a proposed revision to the Occupational Safety and Health Act now advancing through Congress,” reported Jim Stanley, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor, on his Workplace Safety blog. He said that the […]