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Compensation & Benefits

Gender Discrimination

01/11/2014

HR Law 101: Your supervisors probably understand that they can’t pay a male more than a female to perform the same job or dole out promotions only to males. What they may not appreciate are the more subtle forms that gender discrimination may take. They may not make an effort to scrutinize their decisions to uncover any entrenched patterns of discrimination and practices that discourage women from applying for promotions or asking for raises …

Tennessee interns score wage of $22 an hour

01/09/2014

College students who are lucky enough to land internships at Knox­­ville, Tenn.-based WeScore.com will earn $22 an hour. The Internet startup—slated to launch early this year—relies on more than a dozen University of Tennessee students to fill out its small staff.

Make sure your pay policies properly address meal breaks

01/08/2014
Paying employees for break time—or not paying them—is one of the trickiest aspects of wage-and-hour law compliance. Know your obligations!

Condé Nast ends internships

01/08/2014
Condé Nast, publisher of The New Yorker, Vogue, GQ and 26 other magazines, has stopped offering unpaid internships following legal fallout from 2012’s “Black Swan” lawsuit.

Boomers ‘terrified’ of out-of-control health care costs

01/08/2014
More than three in five (61%) pre-retirees now say they are “terrified” of what health care costs may do to their retirement plans, according to a new Harris poll.

MCM Grande & MCM Elegante pay $79,000 in back wages

01/07/2014
A U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division investigation has resulted in the MCM Grande and MCM Elegante hotels paying back wages and missed overtime to em­­ployees at several of its locations in Texas and New Mexico.

Beware offering FMLA instead of workers’ comp

01/07/2014
Some Texas employers try to discourage employees from taking workers’ compensation leave when they suffer an injury. Instead, they encourage employees to use FMLA and accrued vacation and other leave. Always make sure employees volunteer to make that choice.

Benefits: 2014 tax code favors car commuting over mass transit

01/07/2014

For years, the tax code treated employer subsidies for employee parking and mass transit roughly equally. Employers could give employees up to $250 per month tax-free to pay for parking and $245 per month to take the bus or subway. But expiration of part of the Internal Revenue Code cut the tax-free mass-transit subsidy to just $130 per month.

Snapshot: How much vacation?

01/07/2014
Employees with one year of service receive an average of 11 paid vacation days a year, according to a SHRM survey.

ACA out-of-pocket limits delayed for multiple-provider scenarios

01/06/2014
The Department of Labor has announced an exception to the general yearly out-of-pocket expense limits under the ACA.