Labor & Employment Law Update

The recent Appellate Court decision in Oliver v. Illinois Workers’ Compensation Commission, et al., 2015 IL App. (1^st) 143836 WC, serves as a reminder of the dangers employers face when they do not properly investigate alleged work accidents.

Most of us in the comp world know that an injured worker has 45 days to provide an employer notice of a work accident. However, in the Oliver case, the employer asserted that the accident had to be reported the day it occurred. As a result, no investigation was performed and benefits were quickly denied.

Not surprisingly, the Appellate ...

Finally!  As of 1/3/2016, Illinois statutorily enhanced employers’ rights to conduct business through enacting statutory misconduct as a basis for terminating an employee and denying unemployment benefits.  Other jurisdictions may follow suit to protect business rights.

Statutory misconduct now includes:

• Falsification of employment information (application, references, education/work history, SSN) is now terminable misconduct and allows denial of benefits.
• Failure to maintain reasonably required licenses, registrations, etc.

EMPLOYERS BEWARE!  Not even the magical Mickey Mouse can escape lawsuits.  Former employees of the Walt Disney Company filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), intending to sue the house of Mickey Mouse (and now even Yoda’s) for replacing them with foreign workers. Not only are former employees complaining because they were laid off, but they are also accusing Disney of hostile treatment.  Two employees recently recounted to ABC news how they were given 90 days to train their replacements in order to receive the bonuses they were promised. The ...

The New Year is here!  Economic signs are trending up, and indicate that hiring will be picking up in 2016.  Because federal and state employment laws prohibit discriminatory job postings, and the administrative agencies are cracking down on both unintentional and intentional discrimination, care must be used to avoid drawing the attention of the government and other opportunist inquiries by simple “help wanted” posts.

What’s wrong with the ‘cool dude’ request?

It implies that the preferred candidate is: male, younger, a drinker, and has free time.  This discriminates ...

Readers of this update know that Illinois radically changed restrictive covenant law in Fifield v. Premier Dealer Services Inc., 2013 IL App. (1st) 120327.  In Fifield, the court required two years of at-will employment as consideration for a post-employment non-solicitation or non-compete clause entered into at the outset of employment, even if the employee voluntarily quit. The Illinois Supreme Court declined to review Fifield despite the requests of business groups and employer advocates. Since then, Fifield has remained controversial, with one appellate ...

Everyone rings in the New Year differently – some with a party with friends and family, sparkling grape juice with their kids, traveling to a new destination or watching the ball drop in Times Square. Whatever tradition you choose to bring in the new year, the one thing we can all count on is that there will be new employment laws waiting for you on your desk come January 2^nd (if not already).

Paid sick leave laws in many states are requiring that you pay your employees to take time off when ill, to care for an ill family member, or to go to the doctor. The federal Department of Labor is even ...

Late yesterday afternoon, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced it was extending the due dates for certain 2015 Affordable Care Act (ACA) information reporting requirements. The welcome delay gives employers almost two additional months to furnish statements to employees and close to three additional months to file required returns with the IRS.

Specifically, Notice 2016-4 extends:

• the due date for providing individual Forms 1095-C and 1095-B to employees from February 1, 2016, to March 31, 2016
• the due date for filing Forms 1094-B, 1094-C and 1095-C with the IRS from ...

Employers are receiving a temporary reprieve from the controversial “Cadillac Tax” on health plans as part of a large spending and tax bill signed into law by President Obama on Friday, December 18, 2015. The Consolidated Appropriations Act (the “Act”) delays the effective date of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA’s) excise tax on so-called high cost health plans, known as the “Cadillac Tax,” until January 1, 2020.

The Cadillac Tax, previously scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2018, is a 40% excise tax on employers and insurers who offer health insurance plans that ...

Have you noticed that an employee’s requests for leave tend to occur on a Friday or Monday?  Is an employee suddenly unable to work immediately before or after holidays? It is not unusual for employers to experience FMLA abuse, especially around the holidays. The following are a few practices that can help you combat FMLA abuse:

1. Be Vigilant and Be Aware – Having a system that tracks when employees take FMLA leave can help you identify patterns of abuse and act quickly to investigate and address them appropriately.

1. Control Scheduling – FMLA regulations require that absences for ...

A Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) collective action lawsuit, filed over five years ago by Chicago police officers who claimed they were not paid overtime for their off-duty use of work-issued BlackBerrys, went to a bench trial in August, and the federal judge recently ruled in the City’s favor.  Although the court, in Allen, et al. v. City of Chicago, Case No. 10-C-3183 (N.D. Ill. Dec. 10, 2015), found that the police officers were performing compensable overtime work on their devices while off-duty, the police officers failed to prove that there was an unwritten policy to deny them ...