As featured in #WorkforceWednesday: The SECURE 2.0 Act revolutionized retirement planning by simplifying and expanding retirement and health plan benefits.
Over a year after the legislation became law, provisions are still rolling out. So, what’s new in 2024?
Epstein Becker Green attorneys Cassandra Labbees and Mason Gardner tell us more about the recent updates and guidance on the SECURE 2.0 Act.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) continues to aggressively enforce its whistleblower program under the Biden Administration. As we have reported (here and here), the SEC has cracked down on employers’ agreements and procedures that it contends interfere with employee access to the SEC. Most recently, on September 8, 2023, the SEC issued an Order imposing a $225,000 penalty to a private energy and technology company, Monolith Resources LLC (“Monolith”), for allegedly violating whistleblower protection rules in its employee separation ...
Many employers commonly ignore requests from the New Jersey Division of Unemployment and Temporary Disability Insurance (“Division”) to provide the reason they terminated an employee’s employment. With the recent amendments to the state’s Unemployment Compensation Law (UCL), effective July 31, 2023 (the Amendments), employers should rethink that practice. This, among other changes to the UCL, should dramatically alter the way employers deal with New Jersey unemployment compensation claims.
Summarized below are key takeaways from the Amendments.
As featured in #WorkforceWednesday: This week, we look at how employers can make adjustments to their benefits policies to assist employees who want to offer help and support to Ukraine.
As we previously reported, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) was signed into law on March 11, 2021, requiring, among other things, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) to issue its implementing regulations by July 9, 2021. As promised, PBGC issued an interim final rule, 86 Fed. Reg. 36598 (July 12, 2021) (the IFR), on a major element of the rescue plan―the Special Financial Assistance Program (SFA)―intended to provide a one-time payment to the estimated 200 most financially troubled multiemployer pension plans to help them survive and pay pensions through ...
As featured in #WorkforceWednesday: This week, our special podcast series, Employers and the New Administration, concludes with a look at how President Biden’s landmark American Rescue Plan impacts employers.
As President Biden’s first 100 days come to a close, his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) is having a big impact on employers. The plan, one of the largest stimulus bills in history, attempts to provide relief to constituents affected by the COVID-19 pandemic through several ways, among those ways are changes to employee benefits and compensation.
In ...
As part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 ("ARPA"), signed into law on March 11, 2021, employers will be required to provide, on a tax-free basis, a subsidy to employees and their qualified beneficiaries to pay 100% of the COBRA continuation premium for group health plan coverage. This subsidy applies only to “assistance eligible individuals,” who are eligible for COBRA as a result of an involuntary termination of employment or a reduction in hours and who are, or could have been, eligible for COBRA during the period of April 1, 2021 through September 30, 2021 (the "Subsidy ...
On September 9, 2020, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1867 (“AB 1867”), mandating supplemental paid sick leave for employees of companies with 500 or more employees. AB 1867 fills gaps left open by the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”) (previously discussed here) and the Executive Order signed by Newson on April 22, 2020, which only applied to essential food workers (previously discussed here).
The sick leave portions of the law are effective immediately and covered employers must make the leave available no later than ...
As we approach the last quarter of 2020 and the business community begins to plan ahead for 2021, New York employers should be aware of the changes coming to the New York Paid Family Leave (“NYPFL”) program. On January 1, 2021, the amount of employee contributions, the number of weeks of leave and benefits, and the amount of weekly benefits granted under the program are scheduled to increase. This will be the last of three annual increases in weekly benefits.
The NYPFL program, which took effect in 2018, provides partially-paid, job-protected leave for bonding with a new baby, caring ...
Plan participants and their beneficiaries may now have extra time to exercise some of their rights under the employee benefit plans in which they participate. On April 28, 2020, the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of the Treasury issued a joint notice extending certain timeframes applicable to employee benefit plans. The joint notice was published as a final rule in the Federal Register on May 4, 2020 (“Final Rule”), issued pursuant to Section 518 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (“ERISA”), as recently ...
Many U.S. businesses are starting to prepare for phased returns to the workplace. Employers’ planning should consider the impact that various return-to-work approaches may have on their employee benefits and compensation programs and, in addition, how some innovative employee benefits and compensation programs may enhance workplace morale and productivity by assisting employees transitioning back to the workplace. The following summarizes some of the important benefits and compensation issues to keep in mind as employees return-to-work.
Plan Service Crediting ...
Epstein Becker Green’s Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice is proud to present a new "Benefits Guidance in the Time of COVID-19" webinar series. You can access these courses on your own schedule. Keep up to date with a range of benefits and compensation considerations, or obtain an overview of an important topic impacting your company.
Each webinar of this limited series will be uploaded to the firm’s Coronavirus Resource Center as well as the Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice page. If you would like a list of the final episodes ...
As the United States and the rest of the world hunker down in their homes to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), many organizations have implemented “working-from-home” procedures that are designed to protect the health of the employees. Working-from-home, however, presents heightened threats to the cybersecurity of benefit plans, including the plan’s assets and employee data that is collected, transmitted, and stored with regard to employee benefit plans. Plan sponsors and fiduciaries have asked about the particular risks that working-from-home ...
Fiduciaries of employee benefit plans subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (“ERISA”) that appoint investment managers (“Appointing Fiduciaries”) will be interested in the opinion of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania in Scalia v. WPN Corporation, et al (“WPN”) regarding their duty to monitor investment fiduciaries. Given the potential risk related to a breach this fiduciary duty, the WPN opinion is likely to be an important one for Appointing Fiduciaries.
In WPN, the Department of Labor alleged ...
Our Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice now offers on-demand “crash courses” on diverse topics. You can access these courses on your own schedule. Keep up to date with the latest trends in benefits and compensation, or obtain an overview of an important topic addressing your programs.
In each compact, 15-minute installment, a member of our team will guide you through a topic. This on-demand series should be of interest to all employers that sponsor benefits and compensation programs.
In our newest installment,
Our Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation practice now offers on-demand “crash courses” on diverse topics. You can access these courses on your own schedule. Keep up to date with the latest trends in benefits and compensation, or obtain an overview of an important topic addressing your programs.
In each compact, 15-minute installment, a member of our team will guide you through a topic. This on-demand series should be of interest to all employers that sponsor benefits and compensation programs.
In our newest installment, Cassandra Labbees, an ...
The New York City Commission on Human Rights (the “Commission”) has adopted new rules (“Rules”) which establish broad protections for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals. The Rules, which define various terms related to gender identity and expression, re-enforce recent statutory changes to the definition of the term “gender,” and clarify the scope of protections afforded gender identity status under the New York City Human Rights Law. New York State also just added gender identity and expression as protected classifications under ...
There is a visceral and palpable dynamic emerging in global workplaces: tension.
Tension between what is potentially knowable—and what is actually known. Tension between the present and the future state of work. Tension between what was, is, and what might become (and when). Tension between the nature, function, and limits of data and technology.
The present-future of work is being shaped daily, dynamically, and profoundly by a host of factors—led by the exponential proliferation of data, new technologies, and artificial intelligence (“AI”)—whose impact cannot be understated. Modern employers have access to an unprecedented amount of data impacting their workforce, from data concerning the trends and patterns in employee behaviors and data concerning the people analytics used in hiring, compensation, and employee benefits, to data that analyzes the composition of the employee workforce itself. To be sure, AI will continue to disrupt how virtually every employer views its human capital model on an enterprise basis. On a micro level, employers are already analyzing which functions or groups of roles might be automated, augmented, or better aligned to meet their future business models.
And, yet, there is an equal, counterbalancing force at play—the increased demand for accountability, transparency, civility, and equity. We have already seen this force playing out in real time, most notably in the #MeToo, pay equity, and data privacy and security movements. We expect that these movements and trends will continue to gain traction and momentum in litigation, regulation, and international conversation into 2019 and beyond.
We have invited Epstein Becker Green attorneys from our Technology, Media & Telecommunications (“TMT”) service team to reflect and opine on the most significant developments of the year. In each, we endeavor to provide practical insights to enable employers to think strategically through these emergent tensions and business realities—to continue to deliver value to their organizations and safeguard their goodwill and reputation.
This extended interview from Employment Law This Week will be of interest to many of our readers. Attorney and co-editor of this blog, Michelle Capezza explains how recent legal developments have prepared employers for their future workforce, which will include artificial intelligence technologies working alongside human employees. She also looks at the strategies employers should start to consider as artificial intelligence is incorporated into the workplace.
James D. Schutzer is the Vice President at JDM Benefits, a consulting group that provides strategic benefits services to small and mid-size employers. His career in healthcare spans over 20 years and has included leadership roles in employee benefits and insurance sales. He spent 10 years working in sales for carriers like Wellpoint and Oxford Health Plans. Jamie frequently presents and lectures to many organizations on the topic of the Affordable Care Act and sat on the New York State Health Benefit Exchange Regional Advisory Council. In addition, Jamie is the Immediate Past ...
Advisers and financial institutions that are compensated based on a fixed percentage of the value of assets under management may want to reconsider that compensation methodology as it could require compliance with a prohibited transaction exemption, such as the Best Interests Contract Exemption (the “BIC Exemption”), which is a component of the fiduciary rule issued by the Department of Labor (the “DOL”) in April 2016 (the “Final Rule”). While stating in the recently published “Conflict of Interest FAQs” (the “FAQs”) that the ongoing receipt of a fixed ...
Epstein Becker Green and The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) have released a new issue of the Benefits Litigation Update.
Featured articles include:
Recent Supreme Court Decisions Revise Rules for Stock Drop Cases
By: Debra Davis, The ERISA Industry Committee
Hobby Lobby and the Questions Left Unanswered
By: John Houston Pope
Post-Amara Landscape Continues to Evolve
By: Scott J. Macey, The ERISA Industry Committee
Supreme Court to Decide Whether A Failed Class Action May Extend
Deadline to Bring Follow-on Claims By Individual Plaintiffs
By: John Houston Pope and Debra Davis
Epstein Becker Green and The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) have released a new issue of the Benefits Litigation Update.
Featured articles include:
Recent Supreme Court Decisions Revise Rules for Stock Drop Cases
By: Debra Davis, The ERISA Industry Committee
Hobby Lobby and the Questions Left Unanswered
By: John Houston Pope
Post-Amara Landscape Continues to Evolve
By: Scott J. Macey, The ERISA Industry Committee
Supreme Court to Decide Whether A Failed Class Action May Extend
Deadline to Bring Follow-on Claims By Individual Plaintiffs
By: John Houston Pope and Debra Davis
I recently authored an article in TechLifeSciNews: "Considerations for Technology Companies to Attract, Motivate and Retain Key Talent."
The following is an excerpt:
As technology companies innovate and grow, the need for knowledgeable, experienced employees increases along with the competition for the most highly-skilled workers. As a result of the competitive marketplace (as highlighted by the recent high-tech employee antitrust/anti-poaching class-action lawsuit settlement involving technology giants), one of the biggest challenges facing ...
I recently read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, which includes a call to action for men and women to end gender bias in the workplace. Yet, Lean In is not only a discussion about gender bias and stereotypes, women being held back or holding back themselves but, it’s a call to action as a society to work together toward equality. A common question that has followed for many who have read the book is where do we begin; how can we move forward as a society to address the issues that face all of us in the workplace, men and women of all races, cultures, ages, and religious ...
Blog Editors
Recent Updates
- Video: SCOTUS Expands Title VII, EEOC’s Final PWFA Rule, AI Screening Tools - Employment Law This Week
- EEOC Final Rule Implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act
- Podcast: Navigating Physician Non-Compete Litigation – Employment Law This Week
- Maryland Expected to Expand Pay Transparency Requirements in Fall 2024
- Video: Union Reps at OSHA Inspections, New COVID-19 Guidance, and Minimum Wage Updates - Employment Law This Week