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New York

Must we pay for short smoking breaks?

01/09/2009

Q. Would a brief clock-out (initiated by the employee) of less than 20 minutes, such as an impromptu smoking break or personal phone call break, need to be paid as work time?

Do we have to pay health insurance opt-out bonus during FMLA leave?

01/09/2009

Q. Our company offers a health insurance opt-out incentive, paying employees $400 a month if they use their spouses’ insurance plans. We now have an employee going out on FMLA maternity leave. Do we have to keep paying her $400 per month?

Can we deduct personal leave for exempt worker’s partial-day absence?

01/09/2009

Q. Some of our supervisors make their exempt employees take personal or sick leave for every minute they miss from work, even if they work a regular schedule the rest of the week. Can we safely do that?

Attendance policies: Control absenteeism without breaking the law

01/05/2009

Regular attendance is a key job function for most of your employees. But while you are free to set and enforce attendance rules, you must also comply with key federal laws, including the FMLA and the ADA …

Feds issue new I-9 form: Start using it by Feb. 2

12/18/2008

U.S. employers must begin using a revised version of the I-9 Form starting Feb. 2. Employers that use the current edition of the I-9 (dated 06/05/2007) after Feb. 2 may be subject to fines.

Former TV producer ups the ante in disability suit

12/08/2008

Erin Primmer, former producer of “The Montel Williams Show,” has increased the amount of her disability discrimination lawsuit against CBS by a whopping $3 million. Primmer claims she was wrongfully fired after she collapsed from a brain aneurysm in 2007 …

Don’t let fines, tool costs undercut base wage

12/05/2008

Watch out if you ever fine employees, force them to pay others to perform work they can’t finish or make them provide their own equipment. Those expenses may cause them to earn less than the minimum wage.

‘Business necessity’ may become new ADA focus

12/05/2008

Beginning this month, the new amendments to the ADA take effect. Among those rules is one that says employees are disabled even if they can mitigate the effects of that disability with medication or other aids …

Lawsuit: Lehman bankruptcy stiffed riffed NYC workers

12/05/2008

Miron Berenshteyn, a former computer programmer for Lehman Brothers in Jersey City, has filed a $5 million lawsuit alleging the company violated the federal and New Jersey WARN acts when it laid off more than 100 workers in September.

If you don’t track hours, overtime lawsuit may become nightmare

12/05/2008

Many employers make mistakes when it comes to classifying employees—either exempt (salaried) or nonexempt (hourly) from the federal overtime rules. Those mistakes can lead to expensive class-action lawsuits. And if employers failed to track hours worked, it makes it all the more difficult to settle the case.