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Compensation & Benefits

Top companies offer domestic-partner benefits

03/20/2009

According to a recent report, 286 of Fortune 500 companies provide equal benefits to same-sex couples. What’s more, the better the company performs, the more likely it is to offer benefits that serve lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) workers.

What happens to accrued PTO leave when an employee separates?

03/20/2009

Q. Our company is considering replacing sick leave and vacation benefits with a paid time off (PTO) program. How are these plans treated upon the termination or resignation of an employee?

Set ’em up, Joe! Restaurants can require servers to share tips with bartenders

03/20/2009

For several years, California courts have confused employers whose employees receive tips from customers. The question: What sort of tip pools can employers mandate? Iit wasn’t clear whether bartenders and others who don’t directly approach diners could share in the tips. Now, the answer is in from the Court of Appeal of California.

9th Circuit will rehear massive Wal-Mart class-action sex discrimination case

03/20/2009

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to reconsider whether an enormous sex discrimination lawsuit filed against Wal-Mart will proceed as a class-action case.

L.A. car washes charged with wage abuse, union busting

03/20/2009

On Feb. 9, the state of California filed a criminal complaint accusing four Los Angeles car washes, their owners and one manager of wage-and-hour law violations and for creating “a work environment that bordered on indentured servitude.”

IRS challenging med student classification in court

03/18/2009

If you work for an educational institution whose students provide services while learning, prepare to change your payroll systems. Depending how a court rules, you may have to end the practice of paying student stipends as a way of avoiding collection and payment of Social Security and other payroll taxes.

Long-time Caterpillar workers lose retiree medical benefits

03/18/2009

In its 1998 collective-bargaining agreement, Caterpillar promised to provide retiree health benefits to its workers at no cost to them. By 2005, Caterpillar recognized it could no longer provide the health benefits without the retirees chipping in. When labor and management sat down at the table to hammer out a new agreement, retiree health costs was one of the sticking points …

Can I demand reimbursement of training costs?

03/18/2009

Q. I am a small employer. I invested a lot of money and time training a certain employee who just quit less than a year after I hired him. In the future, I would like to have all my employees sign an agreement stating that if they quit within a year, they will repay me at a rate of, say, $200 a month for the money I spent training them. Would this be OK?

Must we pay the union bargaining committee while we’re negotiating our next contract?

03/18/2009

Q. We are about to enter contract negotiations. In the past, we have always paid the members of the union bargaining committee for time spent in negotiations. However, we don’t have a contract provision addressing the issue. Are we required to pay union members for time spent in negotiations?

75% will get raises this year, but they’ll be smaller

03/17/2009

Remember those rosy predictions last summer about how big pay raises would be this year? Forget about it! The global financial crisis has stuck a pin in that cheerful pay balloon. Three out of four employees will get pay raises this year, but for some, those increases will be the smallest in three decades.