Connecticut Employment Law Blog : Connecticut Employment Lawyer & Attorney : Daniel Schwartz : Stamford, Hartford New Haven, CT

For the second time in a month, the legislature has tucked an amendment into a bill that seemingly had no relationship to the original bill and that will have a significant impact on employers in the Connecticut.

Latest case in point: Senate Bill 80 (S.B. 80) which is titled "AN ACT CONCERNING ELECTRONIC UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION PAYMENTS."  For a long while, that bill has just required all employers with at least 100 employees, rather than at least 250 (the current standard), who pay unemployment compensation taxes or make payments in lieu of such taxes to make the payments electronically.

As you might imagine, that bill seems fairly mundane and passed the Senate last week.

Yesterday, the House took up the bill and added an amendment which incorporates the provisions of House Bill 5521 (H.B. 5521), which I discussed previously here.  The amendment (as did the original house bill) prohibits the use of credit reports for employment decisions unless one of several exceptions applies. 

The OLR report and summary on the bill as amended is available here. 

Because the Senate had already approved of S.B. 80 in its original form, the House's passage of the same bill with a new amendment sends the bill back to the Senate for consideration. I will provide a further update on the final approval of this measure after the Senate has considered it.

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It's been much too long since my last installment of "Four for...", an occasional post on some useful web resources that you might overlook in your day-to-day work. 

This post focuses on four things you can find on the Department of Labor website that are particularly helpful for employers.  

1. A comparison of Connecticut's FMLA (CTFMLA) and the federal FMLA laws -- With the changes to the federal FMLA regulations, Connecticut employers are continuing to struggle with the implementation of those rules consistent with the more stringent rules in Connecticut. The Department of Labor (in addition to putting on sold-out seminars on the subject) has a good comparison of the two rules (and which one should apply) on their website. 
    
2. A new updated FAQ for employers -- The Department of Labor has just updated their Frequently Asked Questions (and Answers) page for employers.  It helps answer some basic questions like: "Is an employer required to give employees a break?" or "When must an employer pay wages upon terminating an employee?"  Before you spend time with an attorney or searching the Internet, check out this site too which really DOES help answer some great wage/hour questions. 
    
3. Free posters and guide books (and forms too) - Keeping up with all the posters required by the Department of Labor can be a taxing task. But fortunately, the DOL has summarized the regulations all on their website, which you can download. You can also e-mail the DOL directly and get the regulations and guide books.  And the best part of it all? It's free.  (Of course, there are OTHER workplace posters required by law, but, at least for the DOL requirements,  why spend $50 on a poster that you can get for free?)  The DOL also has various employer authorization forms and other forms for employers to use. 
    
4. An employer's guide to unemployment compensation - If you are an employer, at one time or another, you're going to terminate the employment of various people. When that happens, the DOL again has a great resource -- an employer's guide to the whole unemployment compensation system.  It answers technical questions and the mundane ones. 

And your bonus site: The New Hire Reporting System -- Because all Connecticut employers are required to report all newly-hired employees within 20 days of hiring them, this site allows employers with a fast, reliable, and secure option for reporting their new hires as required by Federal and State regulations.

A full list of employer services provided by the Department of Labor is available here. 

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Leave it to librarians to come up with a great new resource page for learning about Connecticut's unemployment laws.

I can hear the chuckles now. Librarians? 

Yes, librarians.

As long-time readers of the blog know, one of the best kept secret resources for attorneys and businesses are the judicial branch law libraries.  They continue to serve as a clearinghouse for lots of information that is scattered among the Internet.

The librarians latest creation is a pathfinder page on the state's unemployment compensation laws.   Among the items of information: various resource guides from the Connecticut Department of Labor and Office of Legislative Research; links to the relevant Connecticut statutes and regulations; library materials; and useful websites.  It's a great place to start research on the subject.

The pathfinder isn't perfect. For example, although it links to documents helping to explain what an employee's rights are, it doesn't link to the DOL's "The Employer's Guide to Unemployment Compensation" -- a must read for employers who are addressing the issue of unemployment compensation. 

The Connecticut Department of Labor also has additional information helpful to employers on its website (that isn't listed on the pathfinder), including information on: Eligibility Requirements, Quality Control Brochure for Employers, Rapid Response Information Packet, Shared Work Program (as alternate to layoffs).

So, while the judicial branch law libraries have provided a great resource to start looking at the unemployment compensation issue, employers should also be aware of other resources out there. But it is a better place to start research than a Google search.  

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Over the holiday break, I took a look at various stories that I had "starred" in Google Reader for later reading and followup in the blog. (You ARE using a RSS Feed Reader to subscribe to this blog, right?)

The list is long. But part of starting a new year for me is doing a bit of clean up and that means starting the new year off fresh.

But before I do so, I'm going to spend a post or two recapping some of the employment law stories that never quite made it into the blog for one reason or another.

• With the recession firmly in place, it should not be a surprise that the Connecticut Department of Labor has been swamped with calls recently.   In fact, the jobless rate soared to 6.6 percent in November.  A number of people evidently looked for information from the DOL's website, which would be great, except that the website crashed a few times in December due to high traffic.  
• BusinessWeek recently had an interesting article about how some small employers are finding creative solutions to keeping workers to prepare for the next upturn.  A classic story about making lemonade from lemons.  
• World of Work blogged in December about the the deadlock that occurred at the EEOC about implementing new regulations interpreting the ADA Amendments Act. The result: No new regulations interpreting the act, until that stalemate can be broken.  
• I continue to be fascinated by the employment contracts and other agreements that are highlighted by the Footnoted blog.  Michelle Leder and her team dig up interesting filings with the SEC.  For HR professionals, though, these contracts can be a great source of ideas and a good template for other agreements.  Here's one such post by Footnoted.  
• It may be a little late for most (though some firms insist on having holiday parties after the winter break), but this little article lists the top 10 ways to turn your holiday party into a lawsuit.  
• Remember the big sexual harassment verdict against the lawfirm of Baker & McKenzie in 1994? Ok, me neither, but do you ever wonder what happens to some of the attorneys afterwards? In this case, the attorney for the employee has had bar charges filed against him with one judge stating, "I have never, ever seen an attorney more rude and disrespectful on so many levels." (H/T Overlawyered)  
• The Delaware Employment Law Blog recently compiled a list of the top 100 blogs on leadership and management. Great resources for companies from some of the best bloggers around.  
• As I often mention, when lawsuits by former employees get filed, they often get lots of press. But what happens to the lawsuit?  In some cases, the employees lose, such as this case against Timex (subscription may be required).   
• Looking for yet another summary of the new FMLA regulations? I enjoyed this post from the Employer Law Report. 
• Remember the big fuss about the new deferred compensation rules under Section 409A? This post has a good reminder about what employers should be doing about it. 
• I had meant to do a post on workplace investigations, based on this post from HR Daily Advisor, but never got around to it. It has some interesting Q and A including can an employee "plead the fifth" during a workplace investigation.  

Hope you can find a nugget of interest in one of the above links.  

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The headlines over the weekend for Connecticut have not been kind.  Two were particularly striking. First, the Courant ran a story entitled "Sizable Job Losses Expected in State".  The second was a story about the expected closing of The Goodwin Hotel, one of Hartford's premier hotels. 

Both indicate a local economy that is teetering between lousy and downright awful.  As a result, there is likely to be more unemployment .  And with that, more people will be considering filing suit; such is the nature of economic downturns.

For those companies looking for a free primer on the subject of wrongful discharge claims in the state, the Connecticut Law Libraries have just posted a pretty good website with links to a variety of key statutes and summaries.  (You can also save the date of December 16th; I'll be presenting a program for the CBIA on reductions in force as well.  Details are forthcoming soon.)

Although times may be looking bleak, companies should still not ignore the law at this point.  A prior post earlier this year focused on five issues that employers should become knowledgeable on in this economic downturn. (You can also click here, for all of my reduction in force posts.)  For employers, ask yourself how prepared you are to confront these issues.  Preparation is the key and often, when layoffs are needed, they always seem to need to occur in just a few days time.

For companies looking for other ways to save costs, the Ohio Employer's Law Blog has an interesting post up this morning about the risks that increase with such an action.

Times are tough, but employers that abide by the law can ensure that they don't compound the issues and financial difficulties that they may already be facing.

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Six months ago, I predicted a renewed emphasis on reduction in force laws and regulations with the possibility of an economic slowdown looming.  With six months left to go in the year, I'm still feeling good (if you can feel "good" about such things) about that prediction. 

Is the economy still on the yellow brick road or are we walking deeper into the forest filled with lions, tigers and bears?

The statistics from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission do not paint a rosy picture.  

The numbers of discrimination claims filed with the EEOC are up.  

And up by a lot.

In fact, the EEOC reported a 21 percent increase in charges for the first quarter of 2008, over the same period last year. 

So what can employers do? I talked a few weeks ago about one aspect of reductions in force -- namely compliance with the OWBPA (Older Worker Benefit Protection Act) and how compliance with that law can avoid one pitfall associated with a reduction in force. 

But another law that is commonly misunderstood is the WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) Act.  WARN is not a mandatory severance law; in other words, it doesn't mean that employers need to give employees severance when they are affected by a mass layoff or plant closing.

What WARN does require is that the employer give notice to employees who may be affected by a plant closing or mass layoff.  The Department of Labor has prepared this fact sheet for employers to answer some of the basic questions.   It is a law that is, frankly, fairly easy to comply with, and yet there are still some employers who are facing class actions for their alleged failure to comply. 

In addition to notice to employees, the employer must also notify the Connecticut Department of Labor of its proposed actions.  The state then posts them in monthly reports available here.  You can view July's report here.

What is fascinating about the reports thus far is that Connecticut has, as of now, avoided some of the mass layoffs that have plagued some of the other states.  The June reports for Connecticut show only 400 or so employees statewide who received WARN notices.  Moreover, numbers released over the weekend show that Connecticut employers have added jobs, not eliminated them.  Whether this trend continues will be an item to watch for in the second half of 2008.

In an upcoming post, I'll highlight some of the particulars of WARN in more detail.  Until then, try to avoid the fields of sleeping flowers.

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