Employers have a new health care reform deadline to add to their calendars. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Department of the Treasury issued final regulations under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that are intended to help:

• individuals easily understand their health coverage and be able to pick their best coverage options; and
• employers determine what the best coverage option is for their businesses and their employees.

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The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has released new certification forms for leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The new forms carry an expiration date of February 28, 2015, and replace forms that had a December 31, 2011, expiration date.

The new forms appear to be identical to the old forms except for the expiration date. They don’t include the “safe harbor” language required by the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which informs employees that they shouldn’t provide any genetic information when responding to any employer request for medical information.

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Update (April 13, 2012): The deadline for submitted comments about the proposed rule change has been extended until April 30, 2012

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is proposing a rule change that would affect how employers calculate leave time under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and how employees are to be reinstated after FMLA leave.

If the proposed rule is finalized, employers will be required to calculate FMLA leave using the shortest increments they use to track work time. This is a return to the way the rules were written before a 2009 change that allowed employers to track FMLA leave the same way they track other forms of leave. For example, under the current rule an employer can calculate leave time in one-hour increments if it requires employees to take other forms of leave in one-hour increments — even if the employer uses shorter increments to calculate work time. Under the new rule, if an employer tracks work time in shorter increments, it will have to track FMLA leave in those increments.

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The U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) fiscal year 2013 budget request continues many priorities emphasized in the previous year’s budget, such as the effort to combat worker misclassification, while ending or consolidating some programs aimed at helping women and veterans find jobs.

The DOL’s 2013 budget request comes in at $12 billion. The 2012 request was for $12.8 billion.

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The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has extended the comment period on its proposed rule aimed at increasing employment of people with disabilities. The new deadline for comments is February 21.

The OFCCP published a notice of proposed rulemaking on December 9, 2011, that outlined the proposal to revise Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which obligates most federal contractors and subcontractors to ensure equal employment opportunity for qualified workers with disabilities.

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The calendar now says 2012, but employers may notice that their Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) forms from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) carry a December 31, 2011, expiration date. What to do? For now, just keep using the old forms.

The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) has submitted the forms for medical certification, leave designation, and certification related to service member leave for renewal to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Until the OMB approves the documents, you can continue to use the expired forms.

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By Judith E. Kramer
Fortney & Scott, LLC

Update: November 1, 2011: The U.S. Department of Labor has extended the comment period until December 1, 2011.

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Employers worried that they may have misclassified independent contractors may find relief in a new program from the IRS.

The Voluntary Classification Settlement Program (VCSP) was announced September 21 and offers employers the opportunity to get into compliance by making a minimal payment covering past payroll tax obligations rather than waiting for an IRS audit.

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On April 5, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a set of final “cleanup” regulations, bringing the existing Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations up to date with the technical changes and statutory enactments that have passed over the past few years. For example, the regulations, which took effect today, update figures and computations to reflect the updated federal minimum wage, which increased to $7.25 per hour in 2009.

Yet what is more interesting about these regulations, which were initially proposed in mid-2008, is what they chose not to do. Despite receiving numerous comments over the nearly three-year period during which these proposed regulations were up for review, the DOL simply chose to defer consideration of the more substantive matters that were addressed by the original regulations, reducing the 29-page ruling to little more than technical cleanup.

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An agency Web chat hosted by the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) on Thursday, January 6, provided expected dates for proposed regulations on record-keeping under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the “Right to Know Under the Fair Labor Standards Act” initiative is expected in April 2011.

The proposed rule, which will further the department’s Plan/Prevent/Protect and Openness and Transparency goals, will be drafted to provide workers with essential information about their employment status and earnings, including notification of status as an employee or independent contractor as well as notification of whether the employee is exempt or nonexempt. The rules also may require employers to provide a wage statement containing this or other information to employees each pay period.

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