Labor & Employment Law Update

Employers who have been using E-Verify for more than 10 years must be aware that as of January 1, 2015, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will be deleting any transaction records in the E-Verify system that are more than 10 years old.  As of January 1, 2015, employers will no longer have access in E-Verify to any case they created prior to December 31, 2004.  In order to have a record of the cases that are more than 10 years old, employers must download the new Historic Records Report before the December 31, 2014 deadline.  USCIS is encouraging all employers who were ...

On Tuesday November 4, 2014 all five states that had initiatives on the ballot – Illinois, Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota – passed measures to increase the minimum wage. As a reminder, the initiative in Illinois was nonbinding.  Most of the increases will occur in a step manner, but all will need to be evaluated for the impact on our pay and businesses.

The state roundup of Minimum Wage Initiatives is as follows:

Illinois

The Illinois Minimum Wage Increase Question, which was on the November 4, 2014 ballot, passed. This initiative was an advisory question and is ...

Employers often do not question a service member’s request for time off due to being deployed or called up to active duty. However, when an employee comes home from active duty do you know your legal obligations? Better yet, do you know what to do if one of your employees is a service member who regularly requests time off for “training”?

Illinois employers are primarily affected by the federal Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) and the Illinois National Guard Employment Rights Law. The problem is under both laws there is no formal process to check ...

We have all heard the mantra “the customer is always right,” but what is an employer to do when a customer’s request conflicts with an anti-discrimination law? As a Florida security firm learned last week, an employment decision that is based on disability violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) even if the decision is made in direct response to a specific customer complaint. Alberto Tarud-Saieh lost his right arm in a car accident. Later, he was hired by Florida Commercial Security Services as a security guard and assigned to provide security services for a ...

On November 4, 2014, five states — Illinois, Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota — as well as a handful of cities and counties, will all vote on various binding and non-binding initiatives that contemplate raising the minimum wage.  These state and local initiatives arise after a failed attempt to bring the issue on the federal level earlier this year, and are important to watch in an ever borderless commerce system.

The state roundup of Minimum Wage Initiatives is as follows:

Illinois

The Illinois Minimum Wage Increase Question, which is on the November 4, 2014 ballot, is ...

On November 4, 2014, Massachusetts voters approved a ballot referendum requiring Massachusetts employers to provide paid sick leave.  The new law will take effect on July 1, 2015.  Massachusetts joins California and Connecticut as states requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, along with cities such as San Francisco, Newark and New York City.

Under the new Massachusetts law, employers with 11 or more employees must allow all employees (whether full or part time) to earn and use up to 40 hours of paid sick time per year.  Employees accrue paid sick time at the rate of 1 hour for every ...

A few years ago, courts recognized that corporations have First Amendment rights to speech.  E.g. Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (2010).  Recently, a federal court deemed that a minority-owned contractor corporation – a legal entity, not a person – is African American for purposes of anti-discrimination in contracting law.  Is recognizing a corporation’s “race” just a logical “next step” or does this “race” attribute open up unworkable and unforeseen consequences?

Federal laws prohibit discrimination in contracting based on race ...

The Seventh Circuit Appellate Court’s decision last week in Kauffman v. Petersen Health Care VII, LLC, makes clear that the time an employee spends on a given job duty is critically important when it comes to reasonable accommodation requests under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  The Kauffman case also reinforces an important lesson on a reasonable accommodation pitfall that employers must absolutely avoid.

The employee, Debra Kauffman, was a hairdresser at a nursing home, and one of her duties in that role was to push wheelchair-bound residents to and from the ...

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently announced that it has filed suit against a second employer alleging the employer’s wellness program is in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  The EEOC’s first lawsuit of this kind was filed a couple months ago alleging the employer’s wellness program was not voluntary and the employee was discharged for failing to participate in the program.  The ADA concern is that wellness programs often require “medical examinations” and involve “disability-related ...

Beginning January 2015, employers will be subject to extensive ACA reporting requirements. Although submission of the data for 2015 will not take place until early 2016, employers and insurers need to start capturing the required data in January and should ensure that all the proper data can be captured and tracked prior to the beginning of the year.

The rules require extensive data reporting and are intended to help the IRS enforce various tax provisions of the ACA, including the employer and individual mandates.  Proposed instructions for reporting and draft forms were ...