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Compensation & Benefits

Company owes back wages after misclassifying traveling workers

09/24/2008

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor (DOL) has ordered Lebanon-based Pennsylvania Counseling Services (PCS) to pay $196,477 in back wages to 203 mobile employees who were improperly classified as exempt from overtime …

Cop is fired over sex charges, but he’ll still get pension

09/24/2008

The Altoona City Council fired Police Officer Herrick Johnson on Sept. 10 for allegedly having sex with a 16-year-old girl he met online. Johnson, 49, met the girl through a web site that promoted law enforcement careers …

Portlock Maintenance Systems workers got a bum deal

09/24/2008

An investigation by the New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) revealed that restroom attendants at numerous state fairs in western New York, New Jersey and Connecticut were not only unpaid, but were forced to give 50% of their tips to their employer, Easton-based Portlock Maintenance Systems …

Is it OK to exclude vacation pay when figuring base rate for overtime?

09/24/2008

Q. When we are figuring employees’ base pay for overtime calculations, can we exclude their vacation pay?

Indiana employers overlooked health incentive tax break

09/23/2008

Only two companies in the state took advantage of the health insurance tax credit introduced under the Indiana Check-Up Plan last year. The plan granted credits of $50 per employee to businesses that provided employee health care coverage for their workers under a Section 125 cafeteria plan …

Count minutes—not just hours—when figuring FMLA eligibility

09/23/2008

The FMLA limits leave eligibility to those employees who have worked at least 1,250 hours in the previous 12 months. Employers are perfectly within their rights to stick scrupulously to that 1,250-hour benchmark. They don’t have to round the hours up if the employee comes up short …

Apprentice forms and paycheck deductions

09/23/2008

Q. One of the positions in our manufacturing company has a formal apprenticeship program. To stay accredited, we must submit monthly reports showing the number of classroom training hours in which each apprentice participates. Submission of these forms is mandatory, and yet every month there are always some apprentices (for whatever reason) who fail to submit their forms. Can we withhold a portion of an apprentice’s paycheck at the end of the month until we receive the training reports? …

Hours equity: The next frontier of wage and hour lawsuits?

09/23/2008

A class-action lawsuit by 15,000 Indiana state government employees has gone forward to determine whether several state agencies and institutions paid workers unequally by allowing some to work 37.5-hour weeks while others had to work 40-hour weeks …

N.J. employers pay well above national average for health care

09/22/2008

It may be true that you get what you pay for, but New Jersey employers are paying more than most for health care, according to the 2008 Health Plan Survey conducted by United Benefit Advisors (UBA) …

‘Employee’ misclassified? Refer to IRS to recover SS taxes

09/22/2008

Employees have to pay 7.65% of their wages in Social Security taxes, while employers pay a matching 7.65%. Independent contractors have to pay the entire 15.3% themselves. But what happens if an independent contractor is misclassified and should really be an employee? Can the individual sue her putative “employer” for the 7.65% the company should have paid? …