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HRHero is inviting all our HR and business friends to participate in our new HR Feud survey, where you’ll tell your opinion on employment law and HR issues. Then during lunch at the upcoming Advanced Employment Issues Symposium (AEIS), conference participants can see if they can guess the most popular answers to our survey questions.
Take the HR Feud survey
Voting ends on Thursday, August 6, 2008
On Monday, July 19, the Federal Register published interim final regulations from the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor, and the Treasury requiring new health plans beginning on or after September 23, 2010, to cover certain evidence-based preventive care without cost sharing. In other words, plans cannot charge patients copayments, coinsurance, or deductibles for such services (if a network provider supplies the services). However, the preventive care requirements do not apply to grandfathered plans.
The regulations are designed to implement the preventive health services requirements under the massive health care reform legislation (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act) that became law in March. These regulations are the latest part of a series of rules the administration has issued to implement various provisions of health care reform.
This morning, President Barack Obama issued a statement from the White House voicing his support for — and urging Congress to move forward on — the Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA). In the statement, the President referred to the bill as a “commonsense bill” that is one of the key recommendations of the Equal Pay Enforcement Task Force.
The PFA (S. 182; H.R. 11) was initially introduced in 2008 as a companion to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The bill, which passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2009, has since been on hold in the Senate. The PFA would amend the Equal Pay Act of 1963 (EPA) in numerous ways, including: read more…
Today the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) hosted a live webcast interview with Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka. During the webcast, both parties made the case for the necessity of comprehensive immigration reform, decrying individual state movements such as the controversial immigration law in Arizona as a means for racial profiling and shifting blame for economic failures onto undocumented workers.
Trumka outlined the AFL-CIO’s proposed five-point approach, which he noted is the first position to receive unanimous support from every member union of the AFL-CIO. The five points are (1) a mechanism to let current undocumented workers gain legal status, (2) an independent commission to monitor labor shortages, preventing immigration from being a way to drive down wages for the rest of the American people, (3) reasonable border enforcement, (4) strict employer compliance, which includes issuance of some form of tamperproof identification, and (5) putting an eventual end to guest-worker programs.
Following a massive $250 million punitive damages verdict from a Manhattan jury, Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis has agreed to settle the remaining claims in a recent gender bias suit. Pending final approval by the district judge, the settlement would be more than $152 million and would cover the remainder of the 5,600 claims filed in the class-action suit.
The case involved claims from female sales representatives that Novartis paid female employees less than male employees while denying them promotional opportunities similar to those of their male counterparts. The jury found that Novartis had discriminated in pay, promotional opportunities, and pregnancy-related matters, awarding $3.3 million in compensatory damages as well as the massive punitive damages sum — the highest award to date in a gender bias suit — to the 12 employees named in the case. Absent a settlement, damages for the remaining members of the class action could have totaled more than $1 billion.
A proposal to increase Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) penalties now being considered by Congress will not result in any actual improvements in workplace safety and health, a representative of a coalition of employer groups testified on Tuesday, July 13, before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Labor.
Jonathan Snare was speaking for the Coalition of Workplace Safety, which includes the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He was testifying before the House Education and Labor Committee, which is likely to vote soon on a bill containing the proposals. The bill, which also makes changes to the Mine Safety and Health Administration, could go to the House floor by the end of July.
“Prison terms of up to 10 years could be imposed on officers and directors of companies that knowingly violate OSHA rules under a proposed revision to the Occupational Safety and Health Act now advancing through Congress,” reported Jim Stanley, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor, on his Workplace Safety blog.
He said that the 10-year term would apply in situations where a violation contributed to the death of an employee. The current maximum sentence under the OSHA act is six months and the law does not specify that officers and directors can be held criminally responsible.
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