Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) has issued an interim final rule that will continue to limit truckers to driving only 11 hours within a 14-hour duty period, after which they must go off duty for at least 10 hours. The interim rule was issued in response to a recent federal appeals court decision […]
The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that two Maryland food processing plants will pay a total of $1 million to settle a sexual harassment suit on behalf of 22 female workers, all Central American immigrants. Male managers and co-workers allegedly groped the women and demanded sexual favors, and one woman was locked in a […]
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that an employee doesn’t have to include sufficient evidence to prove their bias claims at the time they file their lawsuit, and that such evidence can be developed later on as more facts are discovered. The new ruling involved Akos Swierkiewicz, a 53-year-old of Hungarian descent, who claimed that […]
Forty-nine percent of day laborers polled for a new study said that an employer denied wages for work they completed in the previous two months. In the study, “On the Corner: Day Labor in the United States,” 48 percent of day laborers said that an employer underpaid them during the same time period; 44 percent […]
A Pennsylvania jury has slapped Wal-Mart with a $78.5 million verdict for failing to pay overtime and requiring employees to work through rest breaks. The class action suit covers 187,000 current and former employees who worked for Wal-Mart between 1997 and 2006.
By a vote of 315 to 116, the U.S. House of Representatives has voted to approve legislation that would boost the federal minimum wage from $5.15 per hour to $7.25 per hour in three steps over a period of 26 months. The measure now moves to the Senate for consideration. Under the legislation, the federal […]
Measures to raise the federal minimum wage to $6.25 per hour, up from the current $5.15 per hour, failed in the Senate last week. One measure, introduced by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass) as an amendment to a spending bill, was rejected in a 51-47 vote, and a similar GOP-introduced bill went down in a 57-42 […]
M. Lee Smith Publishers’ President Dan Oswald comments on the generational divide that most companies are experiencing in relation to technology and offers five tips for how employers can harness the know-how and insight of their younger employees. I recently handed a newspaper column written by Financial Times columnist Luke Johnson to my 18-year old […]
It’s frequent in companies of all sizes—but especially for privately held companies—for owners or managers to hire friends and family. In previous posts, we discussed some reasons for this and also talked about some of the dangers of nepotism in the workplace.
On June 14, the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and Treasury issued new regulations addressing grandfathered plans under health care reform and how such plans can keep their grandfathered status. Although the new health care reform legislation (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Affordability […]