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Compensation & Benefits

What are California’s requirements for employee resting & eating facilities?

12/24/2008

Q. Are there any specific requirements regarding the types of resting and eating facilities California employers must provide for their workers?

Court not sold that SEPTA is ‘arm of the state’

12/24/2008

A bus driver recently sued the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA), claiming she and all others like her had been paid less than they were entitled to. SEPTA tried to get out of the lawsuit by saying it was an arm of the state, and therefore immune from Fair Labor Standards Act claims.

BlackBerry time: When must you pay for employees’ off-duty PDA hours?

12/24/2008

Hand-held devices, such as BlackBerrys, Trios, iPhones, etc., make it easy for workers to check e-mail and do work at any time of day. And your nonexempt, hourly workers may demand to be paid for that screen-time. So, when must your organization pay nonexempt employees for such off-the-clock work? There’s no clear-cut answer.

Can we cut the pay of a lousy employee?

12/24/2008

Q. We conduct yearly performance evaluations, during which we review whether employees have met expectations. If an employee fails to meet those expectations, can we legally decrease the employee’s salary?

Must we pay travel costs when light duty means a temporarily longer commute?

12/24/2008

Q. One of our employees who normally reports to another facility has been out on workers’ comp and is now doing light duty in the office. Getting here adds an extra hour to his commute. I know we don’t have to pay for his commuting time, but what about his travel expenses?

Do we have to pay health insurance opt-out bonus during FMLA leave?

12/18/2008

Q. Our company offers a health insurance opt-out incentive, paying employees $400 a month if they use their spouses’ insurance plans. We now have an employee going out on FMLA maternity leave. Do we have to keep paying her $400 per month?

Can we deduct personal leave for exempt worker’s partial-day absence?

12/18/2008

Q. Some of our supervisors make their exempt employees take personal or sick leave for every minute they miss from work, even if they work a regular schedule the rest of the week. Can we safely do that?

Must we pay for short smoking breaks?

12/18/2008

Q. Would a brief clock-out (initiated by the employee) of less than 20 minutes, such as an impromptu smoking break or personal phone call break, need to be paid as work time? The company accepts such impromptu clock-out breaks without prior supervisor approval.

Unfair labor charges

12/15/2008

Q. Our employee relations manager received a charge of an unfair labor practice (ULP) filed by the union with the National Labor Relations Board. In the ULP charge, the union alleges that when the secretary for our attorneys contacted a former employee—who had been discharged for misconduct—to schedule his deposition in his unemployment compensation proceeding, our company engaged in coercive interrogation in violation of the National Labor Relations Act and the Johnnie’s Poultry standard. There were no unfair labor practice proceedings pending before we received this ULP charge. What is Johnnie’s Poultry, and how is scheduling a deposition in a proceeding about a former employee’s unemployment compensation claim an unlawful labor practice?

RIF or no RIF: 8 alternatives to consider before laying off staff

12/15/2008

If your organization isn’t already planning or implementing measures to cut labor costs, it may soon have to. News that the United States has been in a recession since December 2007 suggests that HR professionals should prepare to reduce the labor burden—if only as a contingency plan.