Expert Compliance Insights & Tips for Businesses

March 5, 2011

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Spider-Man' Gets Caught in Web of OSHA Violations

The $65-million Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, beset by spidery actors falling from the heights and landing on the stage from the beginning of rehearsals, is now facing $12,500 in fines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which issued four citations on Friday (March 4, 2011). That's not all. In February, the New York State Department of Labor cite...

March 4, 2011

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New York Ups the Ante on Wage Theft

wage theft WTPA

New York has augmented its already-existing New York Labor Law Section 195 with a more demanding set of requirements contained in the recently enacted Wage Theft Prevention Act (WTPA). WTPA takes effect on April 12, 2011. Section 195 had already required employers to inform their employees in writing of their rate of pay, regular pay day, and overtime rate, and further required employers to ret...

March 2, 2011

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SCOTUS Extends Cat's Paw Liability to USERRA

cat's paw SCOTUS Supreme Court USERRA

"Cat's paw" is a legal term referring to someone's influencing another person to do something (illegal, obviously) and thus potentially becoming liable as well. For instance in work-related circumstances, if a department manager has it in for a certain employee and the employee is then fired by his or her direct supervisor for performance reasons, can the terminated employee s...

February 25, 2011

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OSHA Seeks to Expand Its Ranks of Inspectors

I2P2 OSH Act OSHA

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) employs 2.1 million people, but just 2,335 of them are field inspectors. The agency is thus requesting an additional $24.7 million in its fiscal year 2012 budget to expand by 52 inspectors. As budget negotiations stall in Congress over how deep to cut spending, the fate of the OSHA request is—at best—uncertain. In addition to ...

February 24, 2011

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USCIS Holds Forum on Possible Redesign of Form I-9

I-9 immigration USCIS

On Tuesday, February 23, 2011, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) held a meeting to discuss the use and design of its Form I-9, which is used to document a worker's right to work in the United States. The participants were challenged—at the outset—to envision how they would design the I-9 if they were starting from scratch. Though comments ranged all o...

February 23, 2011

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EEOC Seeks Nearly 10 Percent Increase in Staffing and Funding

discrimination EEOC Systemic Initiative

Although a government shutdown over budget priorities may be looming, that didn't stop the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) from requesting an additional $18 million in funding for fiscal year 2012 to increase the ranks of its inspectors from 2,371 to 2,557—a 9.2-percent jump. The budget request for $385.5 million (an increase of 9.5 percent) is aimed at facilitating the...

February 18, 2011

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E-Verify to Launch Self-Check Program on March 18

Department of Homeland Security E-Verify

The federal E-Verify online employment eligibility verification system, which began as a program named Basic Pilot, has long been used by employers to verify documents submitted by job applicants purporting to show their legal right to work in the United States. However, if an applicant submitted perfectly valid documents (passport, driver's license,social security card, visa, and so on) bu...

February 17, 2011

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EEOC Targets Job Ads Excluding Unemployed

EEOC unemployed unemployment

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) held hearings yesterday (Feb. 15, 2011) into the causes and consequences of a recent trend in hiring—the unemployed need not apply. Phrases such as "no unemployed candidates will be considered" and "must be currently employed" are now peppering job postings and want ads. This has the EEOC concerned that such policies l...

February 16, 2011

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Courts Split on Overtime Status for Pharma Reps

FLSA overtime pay pharmaceutical representatives

The U.S. Supreme Court may end up deciding the issue, but for now one circuit court is saying yea and another nay to whether pharmaceutical sales representatives are eligible for overtime pay. The issue centers on the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) exemption from overtime rules for those employees who are engaged in outside sales. Pharma reps and their attorneys argue that what the representat...

February 15, 2011

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EEOC Receives Record Number of Job Discrimination Filings

discrimination complaints EEOC

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently announced that it has received a record number of discrimination charges during the past fiscal year. The total number of charges received by the agency reached nearly 100,000, representing the highest number of charges in its 45-year history and a 7 percent increase in charge activity since fiscal 2009. An employer&rs...

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