A San Francisco civil grand jury has concluded that 38 restaurants built into their prices the cost of providing city-mandated employee health coverage—and then never offered the benefits to workers. The grand jurors’ suspicion: That restaurateurs pocketed a substantial portion of the money.
Compensation and Benefits
Compensation and benefits topics – whether it’s minimum wage, workers’ compensation laws, or employee pay – if properly handled, can help you retain workers and recruit new ones.
Use our advice to craft independent contractor agreements that keep independent contractors – and your bosses – happy.
Some employees wrongly assume that discrimination must be to blame if someone doing the same work earns more than they do. But even under the Equal Pay Act, employers are allowed to value employees with more highly specific skills and experience.
In 2014, when the employer-mandate provisions of the Affordable Care Act kick in, 9% of employers may drop health benefits, according to a survey of benefits managers by the consulting firm Deloitte.
Workers’ compensation insurance provides compensation to employees for loss of income and for medical payments when they’re injured on the job. Since employers ultimately bear the expense of workers’ comp benefits, it’s smart to understand how the system works and the proactive steps you can take to control costs.
Q. We have an exempt employee who just returned after giving birth. She says she needs to express milk three times a day and we have to let her. I thought the federal law says breaks were just for hourly employees. Do we have to give her this time? She’s away from her desk for 20 to 30 minutes each time.
Minnesota employees can still collect unemployment benefits if they quit their jobs because of medical problems. However, before resigning and applying for benefits, they must ask for accommodations.
There may be many reasons employees end up earning different salaries for similar work. Pay disparities often grow gradually, over time. That can mean big trouble under the Equal Pay Act. If you aren’t tracking all pay changes and noting the reason, you may end up liable for sex discrimination.
Q. Is an employee who resigns entitled to receive unemployment compensation under Texas law?
Ever since enactment of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, pay equity has been a hot employment law topic. In the intervening years, many employers have proactively gone over their pay scales and made adjustments after discovering apparent pay inequalities that crept in over the years.
The Equal Pay Act (EPA) requires that men and women in the same workplace be given equal pay for substantially similar work. If you discover a pay disparity between substantially similar male and female employees, fix the problem right away to let women catch up. Don’t use pay policies as an excuse to slow the process.
