An October survey by consulting firm Watson Wyatt found that 54 percent of employers plan to end salary freezes within six months, up from 33 percent in August. Some 49 percent, just shy of a majority, also said they plan to end hiring freezes in the same time frame.
Overall, 56 percent of those surveyed reported [...]
Provisions in the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, which was part of the stimulus package passed in February, created new security and breach rules for those covered by HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), but afforded everyone a six-month window to achieve full compliance that runs into 2010.
Nonetheless, [...]
In 1993, the nurses at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center in California voluntarily created and voted for a plan to work 12-hour instead of 8-hour shifts while retaining their hourly rate without being paid overtime.
Under the plan, the nurses went from $22.83 an hour for 8 hours to $19.57 for 12 hours. However, for the [...]
In light of 25 recent construction- and workplace-related deaths in the state and on the Las Vegas Strip, Federal OSHA officials have conducted an investigation into the Nevada OSHA program and concluded that it is both ineffective and incompetent.
Complete report available here.
The Feds specifically gigged the agency for not issuing more willful violations, noting that [...]
If you’ve been underpaying and/or under-reporting your company’s payroll taxes, the IRS wants to know–and collect what’s due.
With the annual "tax gap" between what’s owed and what’s paid estimated at $290 billion, the Internal Revenue Service is siccing its agents on 5,000 randomly selected employers beginning in November 2009 as much for a learning lesson [...]
This week a House-Senate panel reconciling budget measures voted to extend for three years the E-Verify online employment eligibility system. At the same time, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) formally withdrew the "no match" safe harbor rule of the Bush administration.
The Bush-era "no match" rule gave employers three months to straighten out mismatched employee [...]
About one-third of all employees who call in sick are faking it, a percentage that has held steady over the years. However, the chances of getting fired for abusing sick-day privileges are falling, down from 18 percent a year ago to 15 percent today, according to a survey by CareerBuilder.com, a jobs site.
The number of [...]
The E-Verify online employee status system faced two new hurdles in September. On Sept. 8, the E-Verify Contractor Rule was set to go into effect but faced last-minute court challenges, and on Sept. 31 funding for the system itself was in danger of expiring.
On the first issue, the courts sided with the United States Citizenship [...]
I’m not sure if this is what’s happening or not, but it looks suspiciously so: The Department of Labor (DOL) is eliminating its Employment Standards Administration (ESA) effective Nov. 8. After that, the four agencies/departments now administered by the ESA will report directly to the DOL secretary.
Which looks to me like a ploy to eliminate the [...]
We’ve just posted a new white paper in that section on the Personnel Concepts new Web site entitled “Popular Misconceptions,” in which we examine the ingenious ways that employers seek to stay off the overtime-pay radar of the Department of Labor (DOL).
Let’s look at one of those methods: Say Employer A sends 20 hourly employees [...]
