• The HR Specialist - Print Newsletter
  • HR Specialist: Employment Law
  • The HR Weekly

Compensation & Benefits

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.

Small D.C. businesses offer employees big perks

01/06/2014
Extra-small employers in the Washington, D.C., area are offering some oversized benefits to their tiny staffs. Washingtonian magazine gave a shout-out to five of them.

Age Discrimination: ADEA/OWBPA

01/05/2014

HR Law 101: Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, employers with 20 or more workers can’t engage in personnel practices that discriminate against individuals age 40 and older. Most age discrimination cases grow out of wrongful discharge and mandatory retirement policies, but they can involve any adverse change in working conditions …

Offer temp job to driver too injured to drive?

01/03/2014
Q. Recently, one of our delivery drivers was hurt at home and is now unable to drive. Should we offer alternative employment?

Can we withhold double the cost of unreturned equipment from employee’s final paycheck?

01/03/2014
Q. Our employee handbook states, “If you do not return a piece of property we will withhold from your final paycheck the cost of replacing that piece of property.” One of our employees recently quit on the spot. My boss wants to almost double the actual replacement cost of the item. Can we do this?

Pay for voluntary training during lunch?

01/03/2014
Q. If our organization offers voluntary employee training, which takes place during lunch, do we have to pay employees for the time spent attending training?

Parrot Cellular pays $4.2M to stop EBSA squawking

01/03/2014
Executives of Parrot Cellular, a Cen­­tral Valley and Bay Area cellphone retailer, have agreed to pay just under $4.2 million to the company’s em­­ployee stock ownership plan (ESOP) following a probe by the U.S. Depart­­ment of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA). Investigators found that company owners had the plan buy company stock at highly overvalued rates.