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Compensation & Benefits

New California law requires pay for rest or recovery periods

02/24/2015
SB 1360, passed late in 2014, requires employers to pay employees for recovery periods taken during hot weather.

What counts as compensable working time?

02/23/2015
Q: We’re a property management company. Nonexempt employees must remain on-call at night and during the weekend to handle emergencies. Usually all they have to do is call the plumber or another service provider. If an employee receives a text or call, is that time compensable? Does the length of the call have any impact on whether the time is compensable?

Challenge unemployment if misconduct led to firing

02/19/2015
Employees who are fired for misconduct aren’t eligible for unemployment benefits because their dismissal was the result of their own wrongdoing. Contest benefits when that happens.

Prepare to pay more to retain tech talent

02/18/2015
The price for top high-tech talent is rising, and employers that want to hold onto the best IT staff had better be ready to pay up. Technology pay in the U.S. saw a second straight year of hikes in 2014, with average earnings of $89,450, up 2% from 2013.

Can we make employees pay for new uniforms?

02/18/2015
Q. We had to provide an employee with a replacement uniform shirt after he lost the one we gave him when he was hired. Can we require him to pay for this replacement by taking it out of his pay?

When new employee quits, can we deduct vacation time she took but never earned?

02/18/2015
Q. We permit our employees to take two weeks of advanced vacation before accruing vacation hours. When an employee takes advanced vacation, we typically reduce the employee’s negative vacation balance as the employee later accrues vacation. Unfor­­tu­­nately, we recently had an employee quit before accruing sufficient vacation time to correct her outstanding balance. May we deduct the negative balance from her final paycheck?

St. Paul mayor touts paid leave before State of the Union

02/18/2015
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman talked up the city’s paid leave program at the White House just ahead of Presi­­dent Obama’s State of the Union. Effective Jan. 1, city employees may now take paid leave for the birth or adoption of a child. Birth parents receive four weeks of paid leave.

Good intentions don’t matter: You’ll pay if you compensate men and women differently

02/18/2015
Employers that don’t pay men and women the same for substantially identical work violate the Equal Pay Act (EPA). The employer’s intent doesn’t matter. What matters is that the pay is unequal. The EPA is a strict liability statute, as one of the world’s most gender-equitable nations learned when it was sued in Minnesota.

Don’t do it! Agencies clarify stances on ACA coverage dodges

02/18/2015
There is such a thing as being too clever by half, when it comes to enforcing the group health mandates of the Affordable Care Act. The IRS and its sister agencies have been putting out fires caused by promoters who claim compliance with the law through a hyper-technical reading of its provisions. Here’s the latest.

Perks at digital marketing firm encourage employee creativity

02/18/2015

Employees of Boston-based C-4 Analytics joke that they “already get to play on Facebook all day” as part of their work as digital marketers, says managing partner Michael Weiss. Yet execs have woven time into employee schedules to get them away from their workstations to “recharge their creativity and focus.”