• The HR Specialist - Print Newsletter
  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR Weekly

Compensation & Benefits

More OT lawsuits? There’s an app for that

06/09/2011
Last month, U.S. employees gained a powerful new tool to prove their wage-and-hour cases: the new “Timesheet” app for smartphones from the DOL’s Wage and Hour Divi­sion. Impact: This is more incentive for employers to accurately track employees’ actual hours worked—not just hours written on a time sheet.

Must we hold job for injured worker?

06/08/2011
Q. We have an employee who has been off work for more than 10 months because of a workers’ comp-covered injury. We have no idea when she may possibly be able to return to work. Are we absolutely required under the law to give this employee her job back whenever she believes she is ready to return to work, no matter how long she has been out?

Check your leave policies! EEOC looks at return-to-work issues

06/08/2011
Now is the time to review your return-to-work policies and practices for employees on leave. They need to be integrated without regard to the reason that prompted leave. Treating workers differently depending on the reason for their absence opens the possibility of a disability discrimination claim.

Feds issue new tip-credit pooling rules

06/08/2011
Employers are now free under federal law to set the percentage of employee tips that can be placed in a tip pool. But Minnesota employers need to be aware of a crucial difference between federal and state laws.

Employees can’t demand specific schedule

06/08/2011
Employees sometimes think that employers have to accommodate all their schedule requests. Not usually. Often, employees fired for refusing to work their scheduled hours expect to receive unemployment benefits.

Merely worrying about pay cut doesn’t justify quitting

06/08/2011
Employees who quit because of substantially reduced pay may be able to collect unemployment. However, they can’t merely speculate that a new pay system will result in lower pay.

Federal appeals court rules on OT for city firefighters assigned to state duty

06/08/2011
Government entities that employ fire­fighters face thorny Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) problems. The law requires overtime pay for fire­fighters who work more than 204 hours in a 27-day period. But that can get complicated when a local agency assigns its firefighters to battle wildfires for the state.

Fight unemployment benefits if employee quits because of unsubstantiated safety fears

06/08/2011
An employee who reports a serious safety hazard and stops coming to work after the employer refuses to fix the hazard may collect unemployment benefits. But that’s not true if the employee doesn’t give the employer a chance to remedy the problem and just quits out of fear.

What’s the New Jersey law on paydays?

06/08/2011
Q. Are there specific rules on when I must pay my employees?

Employer health costs are predicted to rise 8.5% in 2012

06/08/2011

A new PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 1,700 employers says employer health costs are predicted to rise 8.5% in 2012. Employers say they’ll lessen that burden by pushing more costs onto employees.