Articles by WorkWise Compliance team

September 18, 2015

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OSHA Revises Its Fire Safety Manual for Buildings

Firefighting is urgent and stressful work, and decisions are often made without vital information on the hazards that exist. To better protect emergency responders in these situations, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has revised its manual, "Fire Service Features of Buildings and Fire Protection Systems." The revised manual explains how fire personnel can resolve an in...

September 17, 2015

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Fitbit Embraces HIPAA Compliance

Fitbit Wellness, a turnkey software wellness program for businesses, is now compliant with the security and privacy rules of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a step the company hopes will attract more businesses to use the company's software and wrist devices. HIPAA compliance will allow the company to market Fitbit Wellness to HIPAA-covered entities, such as bu...

September 17, 2015

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HHS and AstraZeneca Partner to Develop Drugs to Fight Bioterrorism

Multiple drugs to combat bioterrorism threats and other life-threatening bacterial infections will be developed under a public-private partnership agreement between the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), its Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), and AstraZeneca, a global biopharmaceutical company. The partnership agreement with AstraZeneca uses Oth...

September 17, 2015

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Wages Stay Flat in 2014, But Uninsured Rate Drops to 10.4 Percent

The data are in post-Obamacare, and for all of 2014 the uninsured rate fell to 10.4 percent, down from 13.3 percent the year before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) took effect. In concrete terms, the number of Americans without health insurance dropped from almost 42 million in 2013, before the ACA took effect, to 33 million this past year -- a decrease of 8.8 million people. Meanwhile, the med...

September 15, 2015

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DOL Delays Enforcement of Home Care Worker Wage and Overtime Rule

The Department of Labor (DOL) Final Rule amending regulations regarding domestic service employment, which extends Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) protections to home care workers employed by third-party providers, had an effective date of Jan. 1, 2015. The department has not begun enforcement of the Final Rule both because of its previously announced time-limited non-enforcement policy and be...

September 11, 2015

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Landmark Silicon Valley Gender Discrimination Case Ends with a Give-In

Ellen Pao, who sued Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins for gender discrimination for not promoting her and then firing her for complaining, has officially given up. Pao lost her highly publicized case earlier this year and mulled an appeal. But now she has thrown in the towel, and is thus on the hook for Kleiner Perkins's attorneys' fees, some $275,966 plus interest. “It is t...

September 11, 2015

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DOL Receives Some 25,000 Public Comments on Proposed Overtime Rule

Public commentary on the proposed new overtime rule closed the Friday before Labor Day, but not before some 25,000 comments were received by the Department of Labor (DOL). The rule would raise the minimum salary necessary to be exempt from being paid overtime on an hourly basis from $455 a week to $970 a week, or from $23,660 a year to $50,440 annually. In addition, it would raise the raise t...

September 10, 2015

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GOP Wins First Round in ACA Court Battle

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said he was "grateful to the court" and a White House spokesman mocked it as "just another partisan attack," but a lawsuit by the House of Representatives against the administration over Obamacare funding has survived its first court test. U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer, a Bush appointee, gave the green light to the lawsuit, which contends that the Oba...

September 9, 2015

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Obamacare Enrollment Falls 300,000 (or More) from Initial 2015 Sign-Ups

In its latest quarterly report, the Obama administration reported Tuesday that 9.9 million Americans were enrolled in health care under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) at the end of June, down from the 10.2 million enrolled at the start of the year. Even the 10.2 million figure released for the first quarterly enrollment report, covering the period through the end of March, was down from the 11....

September 7, 2015

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CMS Prepares for ACA Open Enrollment

With Marketplace Open Enrollment set to begin on Nov. 1, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have announced grant awards totaling $67 million to support outreach efforts designed to connect people with local help as they seek to understand the coverage options and financial assistance available at HealthCare.gov. Awarded to 100 organizations located in 34 states that operate Fe...

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Practical articles on HR, Safety, compliance, and people operations—written for real businesses, not legal textbooks.

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