Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that benefits plan administrators can be sued for failing to adequately advise employees of the terms of a mandatory arbitration procedure for appealing benefits decisions. Laboratory Corporation of America had a health plan with a 60-day time limit for requesting arbitration after an internal claim appeal was […]
It’s no secret that the private pension system in the United States is in crisis. Last week, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), which insures pensions for about 44 million Americans, announced that it has a startling deficit of $23 billion, fueled largely by having to take over pension plan liabilities of bankrupt airlines. But […]
Holy Ferris Bueller! Is it possible that some of your employees are calling in sick to have fun in the sun? It’s hard to quantify how many people play hooky from work just to enjoy beautiful, warm weather, but according to a recent CareerBuilder’s annual survey on absenteeism, 29 percent of workers took a faux […]
If you’re like many California employers, your employee handbook contains a statement that employment is at-will, meaning that employees can be fired for any reason or no reason at all, providing the termination does not violate state or federal law. But have you checked your handbook to be sure it doesn’t contain provisions that undermine […]
by Nancy Williams Certain NCAA rules designed to ensure “amateur status” of student athletes may violate federal antitrust laws, according to a decision of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling came in a case filed by Ed O’Bannon, a former All-American basketball player at UCLA. O’Bannon discovered that his name, likeness, and […]
The National Labor Relations Board has ruled that United Parcel Service illegally enforced a broad no-solicitation rule that prohibited employees from distributing literature in nonwork areas during off-hours. UPS refused to allow a Teamsters union publication to be passed out in a warehouse area before work began, but routinely permitted drivers to hand out contest […]
If your employees take home tips, you should be aware that a new U.S. Supreme Court decision approves the way the Internal Revenue Service figures your tax liability on those tips. And if you should want to dispute the amount owed, you’ll now need to keep more detailed records of each employee’s tips.
A California appeals court has ruled that an employee who claimed he was the victim of workplace bias and violence can sue his employer under California Civil Code sections 51.7 (the Ralph Civil Rights Act) and 52.1 (Bane Civil Rights Act), which provide individual protections against discriminatory violence and denial of civil rights by means […]
Data just released by the U.S. Labor Department show that in 2000 the annual fatality rate for U.S. workplaces dropped 2% to 5,195, an all-time low since the agency began keeping fatality statistics nearly a decade ago. However, while workplace deaths for white and black workers declined, fatality rates increased sharply for Hispanic workers, with […]