Employment

To the consternation and bewilderment of many, the New York State Legislature never sent to Governor Cuomo the bill it passed earlier this year repealing the New York State Wage Theft Act’s Annual Pay Notice Requirement.  As a result, employers will be forced next month to once again distribute pay notices to all of their employees.

Those of you who joined us for our November 13 webinar on “Post-Employment Solicitation of Customers & Employees in the Social Media Age” will be interested in a recent social media-related non-solicitation case from Connecticut that – you guessed it – echoes some of the guidance that I, together with my partners Michael Arnold and Bret Cohen

While my entries have focused principally on the employer shared responsibility rules of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), every once in a while an item comes along that nevertheless grabs my attention. The treatment of wellness plans at the hands of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is such an item.

Over the last couple of months, we have followed and reported on a particular ACA compliance strategy under which an employer subject to the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility

Some employers in the health care and other industries who regularly deal with the federal government and are subject to the False Claims Act ("FCA") have felt helpless in trying to weed out serial whistleblowers in the hiring process. After all, most anti-retaliation provisions prohibit retaliation against both employees and applicants.

Last year, the Department of Labor and the Treasury Department/IRS (Departments) issued guidance on the application of certain of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance market reforms to health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs), certain health flexible spending arrangements (health FSAs) and certain other employer health care arrangements.

Since 2007, most Massachusetts residents have been required to either obtain health insurance coverage meeting Massachusetts “minimum creditable coverage” standards, or pay a state tax penalty (for 2014, the penalty ranges from $240 to $1104 per year, depending on income).

In a previous post, we described an Affordable Care Act compliance strategy—referred to commercially as a “minimum value plan” or “MVP”—that involves an offer of group health plan coverage that, while similar in most respects to traditional major medical coverage, carves out inpatient hospital services.

Following up on a topic discussed recently in this space, a class action filed last month against LinkedIn represents just the latest development in the burgeoning battle over defining the permissible and impermissible uses of big data in the employment arena.

Last week, we blogged about the EEOC’s recent litigations involving employee wellness programs, including the Honeywell case where the EEOC sought to prohibit Honeywell from penalizing employees who decline to participate in the company’s wellness program.

In the wake of the NLRB’s aggressive crackdown on social media policies, many employers have asked: “Is there any limit to what employees can post on social media about their employers?”  It appears that there is.

In a surprise move, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced an indefinite delay in enforcement of regulations pertaining to “health plan enumeration and use of the Health Plan Identifier (HPID) in HIPAA transactions” that would have otherwise required self-funded employer group health plans (among other “covered entities”)

My colleague Patty Moran authored an advisory about reviewing Sarbanes-Oxley Blackout Notice Rules when changing a 401(k) investment fund. The advisory describes the origin of the Blackout Notice Rules, the rules’ requirements and penalties for noncompliance, and next steps.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is taking a hard look at employers who implement employee wellness programs that condition eligibility for benefits on participation in such programs. In the past few months, the EEOC sued three employers claiming that their wellness programs violated the Americans with Disabilities Act.

A Federal court in New York recently provided some pleading parameters for employers for claims of tortious interference with business relations.

My colleague, Jen Rubin, has posted on LinkedIn an interesting article on the kind of information that an ex-employee may—or may not—be free to use for the benefit of a new employer.

Applicable large employers faced with the prospect of complying with the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility rules must grapple with and understand what it means to make an offer of minimum essential coverage under an eligible employer-sponsored [group health] plan to their full-time employees.

My colleague Rob Sheridan was quoted in an SHRM article entitled Big Data Only as Good as Data In, in which he comments on the HR and legal implications of both internal and external use of big data by employers. The article focuses on the new trend of big data use in recruiting and hiring top talent, and its meaning in regards to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

The latest casualty to post-employment covenants came at the hands of a Connecticut trial court, which struck down a non-solicitation agreement under New York law as reaching beyond the legitimate business interests that deserve protection.

Under the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility rules, applicable large employers (those with 50 or more full-time and full-time equivalent employees on business days during the preceding calendar year) incur exposure for assessable payments under Internal Revenue Code § 4980H when an applicable premium tax credit