Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
Overturning an earlier controversial decision, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has handed down a major new ruling that strengthens your right to require job applicants to sign mandatory arbitration agreements as a condition of employment.
by Charles S. Plumb The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) prohibits sex-based discrimination in pay and benefits. Employers shouldn’t pay different wages to employees of the opposite sex for substantially equal work. “Substantially equal” work doesn’t mean identical work. It means substantially equal in terms of required skills, effort, and responsibilities. An employer can […]
On April 22, the Colorado House of Representatives passed legislation regulating stop-loss through minimum attachment points, and requiring stop-loss insurers to give the commissioner information about their self-insuring clients with 100 and fewer full-time equivalents. The bill also would give the insurance commissioner authority to unilaterally raise minimum stop-loss attachment points based on medical price […]
Discovery—the right of your employee’s lawyer to seek information from your company—has always been dangerous, and the advent of electronic communications has just made it that much worse. In today’s Advisor, attorney Jean Johnson offers suggestions for reducing liability This article focuses on the “request for production,” which is a request for documents and other […]
Plan design can help employer plan sponsors avoid the objectionable task of paying excise taxes on health plan coverage they provide to employees. The Cadillac tax is the Affordable Care Act’s way of taxing health benefits, in part to fund the law’s ambitious coverage objectives. As liability under the tax in 2018 approaches, employers are […]
Incentives for non-exempts? It can be very successful, say consultants Brandon Cherry and Brooke Green, but you have to be careful structuring and managing the plan, and wage/hour regulations make it trickier. Cherry and Green, both of whom are principals at HR consultant Hay Group, offer the table below to show how incentives fit into […]
The federal Department of Labor has launched a new “Bridge to Justice” program that connects workers with legal beefs to local attorney referral networks. The program launches today. In the words of the DOL:
Hard Work? Patterns in Physically Demanding Labor Among Older Workers, a study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, examines the population of older workers and how raising the retirement age affects those in jobs with difficult working conditions. The study notes that high physical demands are a major reason for “early labor-market exit […]
In yesterday’s Advisor, we featured three of Hunter Lott’s tips from his book Please Sue Me. Today, we look at two more and at a work-saving policy writing tool. Lott, who shared his tips during a SHRM conference, is a partner at HCap International, a human capital training and consulting organization in Lawrence, Kansas. His […]
Due to an administrative error, an employer clearly did not provide a qualified beneficiary with a COBRA election notice. However, the qualified beneficiary also benefited from that mistake by receiving 11 months of free health coverage. For that reason, a federal district court in Iowa rejected claims that the employer should be subject to COBRA […]