Category: HR Management & Compliance
There are dozens of details to take care of in the day-to-day operation of your department and your company. We give you case studies, news updates, best practices and training tips that keep your organization fully in compliance with ever-changing employment law, and you fully aware of emerging HR trends.
In response to the meteoric rise of Internet-related high-tech recruiting, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), working with several other federal agencies, has released long-awaited proposed guidelines defining who employers must count as an applicant to comply with federal recordkeeping and affirmative action rules. In this first installment of our two-part series on the […]
A new Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal ruling highlights how critical it is for employers to take all necessary steps to prevent racial harassment in the workplace and to stop such misconduct when it occurs. We’ll recount what happened and suggest how you can set up an effective antiharassment program.
Many small-business owners both administer and participate in pension plans covered by the Employee Retirement and Income Security Act (ERISA). But the courts have been split as to whether business owners qualify as participants under ERISA and are entitled to the same legal protections as employees, including protection from creditors in the event of bankruptcy. […]
April Chapman sued Sonoma County, claiming she was sexually harassed by her supervisor, Brian Enos. A trial court found that the county wasn’t automatically liable for Enos’s conduct because he didn’t qualify as a supervisor under California’s sexual harassment law. Now a California appeal court has reversed that ruling. To be considered a supervisor, an […]
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a Ninth Circuit ruling upholding a San Francisco ordinance requiring contractors to provide domestic partner benefits. The case involved S.D. Myers Inc., an Ohio company that was denied a city contract because it refused to provide its employees with domestic partner benefits. The company unsuccessfully charged that […]
If you’re like many employers, you continually make changes in the workplace to boost employee health and safety. But it can be difficult to measure whether the changes are effective or whether other fixes are needed. Now, the National Institute on Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has made a new manual and a companion webpage […]
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), truck drivers and nursing aides were the two occupations in private industry with the highest rate of injuries and illnesses requiring at least one day away from work in 2002. The BLS reports that there were 1.4 million total workplace injuries entailing at […]
With Gov. Schwarzenegger poised to deliver enough voter signatures to place workers’ compensation reform on the November ballot, the Legislature reached a compromise with the governor and passed its own workers’ comp reform legislation—which the governor has now signed into law. The measure (SB 899) is expected to save employers several billion dollars a year […]
On April 20, the U.S. Department of Labor released the final and long-awaited changes to the white-collar overtime exemption rules under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The final version, which takes effect in late July 2004, contains some big changes from the earlier proposed version, including expanding the pool of employees eligible to receive […]
Earlier we reported on a California appeal court ruling challenging Ralph’s Grocery Co.’s practice of subtracting certain expenses—including the store’s workers’ compensation costs and cash and merchandise shortages—when calculating employee profit-based bonuses. Now the California Supreme Court has declined to review the appeal court ruling holding that the grocer’s practice violated various Labor Code and […]
