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| Employment discrimination complaints against private sector employers reached an all-time high in the most recent fiscal year, federal regulators said. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it received a record 99,947 charges of employment discrimination and obtained $455.6 million in relief through its administrative program and litigation in fiscal year 2011. |
| (Source: Insurance Journal, 2012-01-27) |
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| Employers of workers who earn part of their pay in tips could face expanding payrolls in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling on an employee wage lawsuit. CFOs of such companies will also need to reconsider their record-keeping practices and their employment strategies as a result of the High Court's refusal to consider an appeal by Applebee's. |
| (Source: CFO.com, 2012-01-19) |
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| The high court ruled last week that religious workers can't sue for job discrimination, but didn't describe what constitutes a religious employee -- putting many people employed by churches, synagogues or other religious organizations in limbo over their rights. |
| (Source: Fox News, 2012-01-20) |
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| Union membership in the United States slipped last year to a record-low percentage of the workforce. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said labor unions represented 7.6 percent of private-sector employees in 2011. |
| (Source: The Kansas City Star (free reg. req'd), 2012-01-27) |
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| The battle over the right-to-work issue may be reaching a conclusion in Indiana as the state prepares to become the first to adopt the law in more than a decade, but the argument over exactly what the measure means for a state's economy is likely to rage on, unresolved, as it has for 70 years. Since the 1940s, 22 states have passed laws barring unions from collecting mandatory fees from workers for labor representation. |
| (Source: USA Today (free reg. req'd), 2012-01-27) |
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| A Florida court reversed a jury ruling that awarded $1 million to a former TV health reporter who claimed she was fired for being too old. The Third District Court of Appeals in Miami reversed the 2010 jury finding that Sunbeam Television Corp., the owner of WSVN-Fox 7, had fired reporter Marilyn Mitzel three years earlier because she was too old for television. |
| (Source: United Press International, 2012-01-19) |
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| The Obama administration is targeting employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, rather than staging high-profile workplace raids. In the 2010 fiscal year, U.S. immigration officials' worksite probes resulted in a record $36.6 million in judicial fines, forfeitures and restitutions. |
| (Source: Houston Chronicle, 2012-01-24) |
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| Former Groupon sales representatives sued by that company after leaving for Google have filed a countersuit, claiming their former employer is pursuing "sham" litigation to keep them from joining rivals. Groupon, which runs the world's largest online coupon website, had accused Nikki Dorough, Brian Hanna and Michael Nolan of taking confidential trade secrets when they moved to the world's largest Internet search company. |
| (Source: Reuters, 2012-01-27) |
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| Should pregnancy be treated as a disability? A recent study by a University of Dayton law professor, Jeannette Cox, asserts that pregnant women should be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act, to protect them from being fired or forced to perform labor that could be harmful to mother or child. |
| (Source: The Wall Street Journal, 2012-01-25) |
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| Fewer U.S. workers admit to seeing violations of the law or ethics in the workplace, but more of them are reporting the wrongdoing when they do notice it. That's the conclusion of the National Business Ethics Survey conducted every two years by the Ethics Resource Center. |
| (Source: The Orange County Register, 2012-01-24) |
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| A random search of online job listings last year by the National Employment Law Project, a nonprofit advocacy group, found 150 ads nationwide that excluded applicants based on employment status. New Jersey has passed a law banning such advertisements, federal legislation is pending, and a newly proposed California bill, Assembly Bill 1450, would prohibit discriminating against the jobless in hiring. |
| (Source: Miami Herald (free reg. req'd), 2012-01-23) |
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| When Christa Dias of Cincinnati, Ohio, was hired as a part-time technology teacher in 2008 at Holy Family School, and in 2009 at St. Lawrence Catholic School, she had to sign employment contracts agreeing to comply with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. Ms. Dias is not, herself, Catholic. In October 2010, shortly after Ms. Dias asked for maternity leave, she was fired from both schools for breaching her employment contracts. |
| (Source: New York Law School, 2012-01-25) |
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In the ever confusing world of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) administration, we know that "more changes" is the last thing employers want to hear (unless they are benefit employers, which is rare). The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), however, is finally catching up to some of the statutory changes made in 2009 – changes which many employers have already attempted to implement without any guiding regulations or updated forms from the DOL. These proposed amendments to the regulations are "hot off the press" – in fact, at the time of this publication, they are not technically "off the press" at all because they have not yet been published in the Federal Register. We will provide additional updates once we have more thoroughly reviewed the 213 pages of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, or NPRM. In the meantime, we wanted to give you some sense of the changes potentially coming. Additional information can be located on the DOL's website. The DOL will accept comments on the changes for a 60 day period after the NPRM is published.
Read full article online. |
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Ohio Supreme Court Clarifies That Certain Retirements Limit Rights of an Employee to Payment of Workers’ Compensation Disability Benefits
In a recent ruling, the Ohio Supreme Court clarified the standard as to when a claimant’s retirement would bar recovery of future workers’ compensation disability benefits. Ice Miller obtained a favorable decision from the Court which denied an injured worker the right to disability compensation benefits after the employee accepted a voluntary retirement of employment from the company.
Read full article online.
CMS Issues Revisions to User Guide:
MMSEA Section 111 Liability Insurance (Including Self-Insurance), No-Fault Insurance and Workers ’ Compensation User Guide Version 3.3
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) posted Version 3.3 of the User Guide, dated Dec. 16, 2011, (the Version 3.3) on its website. Version 3.3 includes the guidance that CMS has provided in various alerts since the previous User Guide was published as of Aug. 17, 2011. A summary of all of the changes to Version 3.3 are available on pages six and seven of the User Guide.
If you have any questions about the updated User Guide, please contact an Ice Miller Workers’ Compensation attorney. |
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