Washington recently became the 5th state to adopt a paid family leave law. Washington’s version offers longer leave times and is portable between jobs, which has experts touting it as the nation’s strongest program of its kind. Administered by the Employment Security Department, it is set up as a kind of insurance plan with premium…
Oregon has become the first state to roll out an automatic, state sponsored retirement program. Other states are still in the planning phases but are sure to soon follow. Officially titled the Oregon Retirement Savings Program, but more commonly referred to as OregonSaves, the Program creates an automatic individual retirement account (auto-IRA) through which deductions…
Effective immediately Employers are no longer allowed to ask candidates, or their former employers, about prior salary history. While the full protections of the Oregon Equal Pay Act don’t go into effect in January of 2019, parts of the multi-layered law are effective October 6th, 2017. Similar to the law passed in Massachusetts earlier, this…
A new Portland lawsuit filed in December triggered BOLI to reexamine its overtime guidelines in relation to daily and weekly overtime calculations for manufacturing employees. Manufacturing is defined on the BOLI site as: “any place where machinery is used for ‘manufacturing purposes,’ which includes the process of making goods or any material produced by machinery;…
A federal judge in Texas blocked the new overtime rules that were to go into effect Thursday, December 1, 2017. The new law, spearheaded by Obama in an effort to raise wages, would have extended mandatory overtime to 4 million employees. (Red Zone HR wrote about the changes here.) With the injunction issued late last…
A progressive new Massachusetts law banning asking candidates for salary histories during the interview process was signed on August 1st of this year. This law has quickly gained traction, more than any other employment law prior. Just four weeks later, New York City and the state of California have already signed similar laws. Now a…
The Department of Labor released their much-anticipated changes to the FLSA overtime exemption rules last month. If you didn’t catch the changes that are coming, then here are the basics of what managers need to know now. What’s changing and when? This latest change updates the minimum salary level required for exemption from $23,660 annually…
