The U.S. Department of Labor announced last week that covered federal contractors and subcontractors will be required to pay workers an hourly minimum wage of $10.20 an hour beginning January 1, 2017.  The minimum cash wage for tipped workers will increase to $6.80 an hour.

The annual increases are required by an Executive Order issued in February 2014, which mandates that ...

As our regular readers know, Employment & Labor Insider is a non-partisan blog. But with the first Presidential debate coming on Monday night, I thought it would be helpful to look at the two major presidential candidates and their positions on issues of interest to employers.

The following comes from each of the candidates' websites, supplemented by some news stories, with a ...

(St. Patrick's Day is sooooo nine hours ago!)

Ever looking to the future, we celebrate the coming April Fools' Day with this month's greatest employment law blog posts. Some of my summaries are accurate, and others are "fools' editions" - you'll have to read the actual posts to know which is which. There are so many excellent posts that I'm listing them in alphabetical order by ...

NOTE: On January 15, this post was updated and one correction made (see "Nipped in the bud" and "Jury clobbers Catholic diocese," below). 

Happy New Year, everyone! While I've been out for the holidays, the courts and government agencies have stayed busy with employment law matters. Here are the developments that I thought were especially noteworthy:

WAGE AND HOUR

Twenty states raised ...

Employers can hope, but that doesn't necessarily mean change.

Tuesday night's Republican rout in the midterm elections was big news, but is it much ado about nothing from an employer's standpoint? Here are a few reasons not to become too giddy (if you were happy about the outcome) or too depressed (if you weren't):

1. Although the GOP will have control of the Senate, it does not have the 60 senators needed to override a presidential veto. So, even though House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), presumably the next Senate majority leader, are saying they'll work to repeal or partially roll back the Affordable Care Act, expect to see an actual vote that is largely symbolic. The President is expected to veto any but the most incremental legislation, and the Republicans won't be able to do anything about it unless they can find six moderate Democrats to join them. Are there any moderate Democrats left after Tuesday?

My colleague and fellow blogger Jon Hyman had an excellent post this week about the settlement in the Dura Automotive case -- in which the company tested its employees for both illegal and legal drugs. And that wasn't all -- according to the press release of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, employees who tested positive for the designated legal drugs were required to state ...

Don't eat that pretty red apple, Snow White!!! It has poison in it!!!!

You know the old saying, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is"? Well, it appears that this may be the case with the new "sweet deal" the Internal Revenue Service is offering to employers who agree to reclassify their "independent contractors" [sic] as "employees" in exchange for some admittedly generous ...