Nearly a year after a Department of Labor (DOL) Final Rule intended to raise the salary threshold for overtime-exempt status was put on hold before it could go into effect, a federal court has struck the exponential increase down for good. Stating that that the DOL had “gone too far,” the U.S. District Court for Read more
Employers nation-wide, get ready to raise your voice: the U.S. Department of Labor has issued a Request for Information on 2016’s highly contested “overtime rule,” asking stakeholders to provide comments that will be used to shape a future revision of the rule. The RFI is available for preview here, although the comment period does not Read more
Just six months after increasing the penalties for violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the U.S. Department of Labor has announced another adjustment to the penalties for FLSA violations. The first adjustment was made last August pursuant to the Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015 (Inflation Adjustment Act). The Inflation Read more
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has given notice of a proposal that would require certain employers to report employee pay information as part of the required Employer Information Report (EEO-1) starting in 2017. The EEO-1 is an annual report that requires most federal contractors (with 50 or more employees) and private employers (with Read more
On May 7, 2015, the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Department of Labor. Like the MOU between the U.S. Department of Labor and states like Alabama, California, Florida, and Massachusetts, Rhode Island’s agreement was created to battle employee misclassification. State agencies in Rhode Island Read more
The US Department of Labor today published a new Final Rule expanding military-related leave protections under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The Final Rule is effective March 8, 2013. The Final Rule implements two important expansions of FMLA protections. The first expansion provides families of eligible veterans with the same job-protected FMLA leave Read more
The U.S. Department of Labor published in February a final rule to improve the H-2B temporary non-agricultural worker program. The H-2B program allows U.S. employers to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary non-agricultural jobs. The rule includes changes to several aspects of the H-2B program to ensure that U.S. workers receive Read more
Earlier today US DOL issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to implement and interpret new statutory amendments to the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) that expand military family leave provisions and incorporate a special eligibility provision for airline flight crew employees. The FMLA entitles eligible employees of covered employers to take unpaid, job-protected leave Read more
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued the Final Rule requiring private-sector employers to post the NLRA Poster. This notice requirement is effective January 31, 2012. You may be asking yourself, “How does this affect my business?” The bottom line is that private-sector employers and labor organizations whose workplaces fall under the National Labor Read more
A state legislative session summary may sound like a boring proposition, but important laws and amendments to laws can make for interesting news especially when they positively affect one group or another. Before we recap Maine and New Hampshire’s 2011 legislative sessions we will briefly review an important portion of our democratic system, the legislative Read more
