Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
This topic provides guidance on how to handle compensation issues in a way that attracts and retains the best talent and advances the strategic goals of your business. You get news and tips on what’s going on nationally and in the states, and updates on changes in regulations, possible governmental action, and emerging compensation trends.
Cooper chairs the labor and employment practice group at law firm Garvey Schubert Barer in Portland, Oregon. Her tips came at a recent BLR-sponsored webinar. Technically, What’s a Part-Timer? Regular part-time employees are workers who are normally scheduled to work fewer than 40 hours per week and who are not designated to receive the typical […]
Most employment laws include provisions protecting employees from vindictive managers who would otherwise punish them for exercising their rights. The Family and Medical Leave Act is no exception. Late last year, the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division released Fact Sheet # 77B explaining the FMLA’s anti-retaliatory provisions. Here are some highlights: Prohibitions An […]
Travel by non-exempts outside the normal area brings two different sets of rules into play. (As we mentioned yesterday, exempt employees are expected to work as and when the job requires.) Special Assignment in a Different Location When an employee who regularly works at a fixed location in one city is given a special one-day […]
Whether time spent traveling is paid work time depends on the type of travel involved: commuting, day travel, and overnight travel. Travel time that is work time is subject to both the minimum wage and overtime pay requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. (Don’t forget to check state laws on travel pay; some states, […]
Employers with fleets of vehicles can now determine the value of making them available for use in 2012, thanks to the IRS, which on Jan. 17 released the maximum vehicle values for use with the special valuation rules for employer-provided cars, trucks and vans in 2012. Revenue Procedure (Rev. Proc.) 2012-13, provides the new maximum […]
Sexual harassment charges had been declining somewhat, but the recent publicity will reverse that trend, says Schickman, who is a partner at Freeland Cooper & Foreman LLP in San Francisco. His remarks came at BLR’s Advanced Employment Issues Symposium in Las Vegas. Schickman is a member of the Employers Counsel Network, and edits the BLR/HRhero […]
With Jennifer McCormack, Esq. Lots of different kinds of coverage will not have to report their expenses next tax year (the 2012 tax year), and lots of employers won’t have to either. Are you one of them? Beginning calendar year 2012, employers must report on Forms W-2 (which employers will give employees in January 2013) […]
Confused about what exactly a “leased employee” is? Turns out a lot of people the IRS contacted were, too. The IRS’ Employee Plans Compliance Unit (EPCU) recently completed its study on the role of leased employees in retirement plans. When EPCU asked plan sponsors who used pension feature code “3F” on their Forms 5500 — […]
The economy may have slowly crept back up last year (as ABC News writes here; see also the Jan. 6 economic report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics), but that doesn’t mean that everything is rebounding. A new analysis by actuarial firm Milliman shows that the funding deficit for 100 of the largest pension plans […]
Schickman is a partner at Freeland Cooper & Foreman LLP in San Francisco. His remarks came at BLR’s Advanced Employment Issues Symposium in Las Vegas. EEOC staffers have a lot of cases, and they want to get cases into their “resolved” file. Also, he adds, you often get some relief on document production and reporting […]