Hot Times in HR

An unprecedented level of heat is being focused on HR and Compensation departments these days.  

1.  The proposed minor FLSA paperwork regulation change that would place a covered employer in non-compliance with the overtime exemption rules if you do not conduct a position classification, communicate that exemption logic to every affected employee and maintain the exemption communication record for examination by the WHD inspector.  Imagine having to sit down with the CEO and the executive assistants and the entry professionals like accountants and economists to get their signature on a record proving you explained your denial of FLSA overtime to them.

2.  The withdrawal of FLSA opinion letters. The DOL will no longer issue opinion letters on a specific set of facts.  Instead, they will only issue Administrator Interpretations with much broader application citing specific regulatory language provisions rather than the logic going forward.  DOL has also withdrawn 16 opinion letters from 2009 without indicating which positions may be reversed. Unlike previous FLSA reform efforts, these changes appear to have been implemented without a formal review process involving public commentary requests.

3.  There is a requirement in the Health Care Reform act that requires publishing the amount of employer-provided cost for your health care programs on employee W-2s:
http://democrats.senate.gov/reform/patient-protection-affordable-care-act-as-passed.pdf
in Sec. 9002 on p. 735 of 906 pages.  If that is accepted in the final bill, each paycheck will detail an amount of money the employee might prefer to see in their pockets rather than going to health care coverage.  Besides the obvious simplest employee relations challenges dealing with how you communicate “their” cost, this issue will be complicated by any legal provisions that give preferred treatment to unionized workforces.  Considering this Administration’s position on unionization, it would be next to impossible to imagine a Health Care Reform act that doesn’t actively solicit greater union membership; but I won’t count that as a separate issue.

4.  The Paycheck Fairness Act contains a provision giving whistle-blower types of protections against any employee disclosing the wages or salaries or other information about any other employee. 

5.  Legislation was introduced in April 2010 in the House and Senate (The Employee Misclassification Prevention Act) to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to strengthen enforcement and penalties for misclassification of employees as independent contractors. 

6.  Some FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) provisions have been extended to same-sex domestic partners, creating new compliance requirements, new expenses and new liability exposures to employers.

7.  More developments from OSHA, NLRB and EEOC are also forthcoming.

All these measures combine to create lots of pressure on Total Reward professionals!  More may be coming, too.  A return to the Comparable Worth pay issue or a new drive for the union card-check rule that will do away with secret elections, maybe?

Any combination of these new mandates may support both individual and departmental recourse to the blog of last week titled “Why I Deserve a Raise. “

Isn’t it nice to work in a challenging field where you are needed?

E. James (Jim) Brennan is Senior Associate of ERI Economic Research Institute, the premier publisher of interactive pay and living-cost surveys. Semi-retired after over 40 years in HR corporate and consulting roles throughout the U.S. and Canada, he’s pretty much been there done that  (articles, books, speeches, seminars, radio/TV, advisory posts, in-trial expert witness stuff, etc.) and will express his opinion on almost anything.

Image: Creative Commons Photo "Flame" by muffet

Comments

[Laura Schroeder]

Very informative post - and I had to laugh as I scrolled down from today's post to yesterday's post and compared the two pictures.

[Paul Weatherhead]

Jim,

What are you trying to do? Keep us from sleeping at night?

[E. James (Jim) Brennan]

Good thing it wasn't Smokey the Bear, Laura.

If I can't sleep, I might as well have some company, Paul.

[Windsor Lewis]

I very much lament the withdrawal of the opinion letters. They were incredibly useful.

And the proposed change to FLSA paperwork has me concerned enough that I've already revised my market pricing and job documentation templates to be ready to comply with this.