Employment

Last week, President Obama issued two important directives aimed at ending gender pay disparities. The first, an Executive Order, prohibits federal contractors and subcontractors with government contracts exceeding $10,000 from retaliating against employees who discuss their compensation with their co-workers.

Particularly with the issuance of final regulations under the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility rules, employers have been concerned—justifiably—with the pay-or-play penalties.

Our colleague, Sarah Hogan, recently posted a fantastic entry on Mintz's brand new Technology Matters blog about Massachusetts' proposed non-compete legislation, with practical guidance for what its passage might mean for your business.

For “applicable large employers” (i.e., generally, those employers who employed an average of at least 50 full-time employees on business days during the preceding calendar year), determining which employees are “full-time” employees is central to their efforts to comply with the employer shared responsibility provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

We have written a few times about the EEOC’s closer inspection of background checks and the use of criminal records in employment decisions because of their potential adverse impact on classes of applicants.

Recently, New York Mets player Daniel Murphy was criticized for taking a few days off at the start of the season to bond with his newborn.  In this Law360 Article, I comment on this issue and weigh in on what employers should be doing to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The recent release of Notice 2014-19 and IRS FAQs provide some initial pieces of the guidance that the IRS first promised in September 2013 regarding administrator obligations when amending employee benefit plans to account for the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor and Rev. Rul. 2013-17.

The NLRB is back at it, finding last week in Hills and Dales General Hospital, that seemingly innocuous policies prohibiting negativity and gossip in the workplace and requiring employees to represent their employer in a positive and professional manner violates the National Labor Relations Act.

In baseball, the beginning of spring means hope for fans of even the most hard luck teams. Unfortunately for one erstwhile fan, the first days of spring ushered in a dismissal of his putative wage and hour class action.

In a rare display of bipartisanship, Congress voted to eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s separate cap on deductibles that applies to individual and small group insurance products. (These limits never applied to large fully-insured groups or to self-funded plans.)

The New York City Earned Sick Time Act goes into effect today. In other news, the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs has released proposed rules to “establish requirements to implement the [paid sick leave] Act and meet its goals, and provide guidance to covered employers and protected employees.” The proposed rules are available here.

Distinguishing employees who are full-time from those who are not takes up a good deal of real estate in final regulations published in the Federal Register on February 12 implementing the Act’s employer shared responsibility rules (the “final regulations”).

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear oral argument on the issue of whether employers must compensate employees for time they spend going through mandatory security checks, which are aimed to curb employee theft.

Alden Bianchi comments on what employers should be doing (The short answer? Check your numbers!) in light of the recently released final ACA regulations in an article published by U-T San Diego. Also included is a checklist for businesses, plus tips for determining the number of full-time employees for employers with seasonal workers or those with irregular hours.

On Wednesday, the New York City Council voted 50-0 to extend the New York City Human Rights Law’s protections to interns. Last October, we reported on a Federal court decision dismissing an unpaid intern’s hostile work environment and discrimination claims because she wasn’t protected under the statute.

I have to admit, when I read the news that the Supreme Court had ruled earlier this week that severance payments are “wages” subject to payroll taxes, I thought I was on crazy pills: Didn’t we already know that? But, apparently, the IRS had received a ton of refund claims specifically related to FICA taxes paid on severance, to the tune of more than $1 billion.

Our attention on the NCAA college basketball tournament was temporarily diverted by the non-courtside drama that played out this week when the University of South Florida revoked its head coaching offer to Steve Masiello after it learned that he lied about his educational credentials. Coach Masiello had signed a deal to become head coach of USF’s basketball program.

Last week, we placed the union recognition effort of Northwestern University’s football players as the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region in our blog entry of issues that may change the face of the Final Four. That issue has now certainly cemented its No. 1 status.

Have you taken the steps necessary to comply with NYC’s paid sick leave law yet? If not, what are you waiting for? The Act goes into effect on Tuesday, April 1, 2014.

Final regulations under Code § 4980H published in the Federal Register on February 12 include a new term—“limited non-assessment period”—which describes periods for which an applicable large employer (i.e., an employer with an average of 50 or more full-time and full-time equivalent employees on business days during the preceding calendar year) will not be subject to