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Compensation & Benefits

IRS challenging med student classification in court

03/18/2009

If you work for an educational institution whose students provide services while learning, prepare to change your payroll systems. Depending how a court rules, you may have to end the practice of paying student stipends as a way of avoiding collection and payment of Social Security and other payroll taxes.

Long-time Caterpillar workers lose retiree medical benefits

03/18/2009

In its 1998 collective-bargaining agreement, Caterpillar promised to provide retiree health benefits to its workers at no cost to them. By 2005, Caterpillar recognized it could no longer provide the health benefits without the retirees chipping in. When labor and management sat down at the table to hammer out a new agreement, retiree health costs was one of the sticking points …

Can I demand reimbursement of training costs?

03/18/2009

Q. I am a small employer. I invested a lot of money and time training a certain employee who just quit less than a year after I hired him. In the future, I would like to have all my employees sign an agreement stating that if they quit within a year, they will repay me at a rate of, say, $200 a month for the money I spent training them. Would this be OK?

Must we pay the union bargaining committee while we’re negotiating our next contract?

03/18/2009

Q. We are about to enter contract negotiations. In the past, we have always paid the members of the union bargaining committee for time spent in negotiations. However, we don’t have a contract provision addressing the issue. Are we required to pay union members for time spent in negotiations?

75% will get raises this year, but they’ll be smaller

03/17/2009

Remember those rosy predictions last summer about how big pay raises would be this year? Forget about it! The global financial crisis has stuck a pin in that cheerful pay balloon. Three out of four employees will get pay raises this year, but for some, those increases will be the smallest in three decades.

Social Security disability doesn’t mean no accommodations

03/13/2009

A federal court has sided with the EEOC in a disability discrimination case involving the Macomb store of auto parts retailer AutoZone. The case involved a store manager, John Shepherd, who suffered from back and neck injuries that limited his ability to lift or rotate his upper body.

Are telecommuters part of FMLA head count?

03/13/2009

Employees are eligible for FMLA benefits if they have worked for their employer for a total of one year and at least 1,250 hours in the last 12 months. The criteria don’t stop there. Employers must comply with the FMLA if they employ 50 or more workers within 75 miles of the employee’s workplace. But what if some of those employees work out of their homes?

Study cites Illinois as a hotbed of wage-and-hour claims

03/13/2009

A recent report offers some ominous news for Illinois employers. Illinois is one of eight states that saw an increase in class-action wage-and-hour cases filed in state court last year, according to the Seyfarth Shaw law firm’s new Workplace Class Action Litigation Report.

DOL: TMG National Holdings held onto too much

03/13/2009

The U.S. Department of Labor has filed suit against TMG National Holdings, a real estate development company based in Chicago, alleging it diverted funds intended for employee retirement benefits.

Think twice before firing workers’ comp applicant

03/12/2009

Minnesota employees are protected from being fired in retaliation for filing a workers’ compensation claim. That means employers have to think twice before discharging such an employee for anything but the most solid reasons.