Articles Posted in Blog

Five years since the Fair Pay Act, women still make just seventy-seven cents for every dollar a man earns for performing the same job according to the Department of Labor. In 2009, President Obama passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act promising equal pay for equal work. However, women are still are paid considerably less…

A recent survey found that 80% of employers will Google job seekers before inviting them to an interview.  Your resume and references alone are no longer enough.  Now a quick name search has become routine, and current employers are keeping tabs, too. Although not everyone will have a glowing newspaper article about them, something as…

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Employees in New York City cannot be fired for taking a day off because of sickness. From April 1, 2014, employees working in New York City for a company that employs five or more people are entitled to paid sick leave. Employees who work for a company that employs fewer than five people are still…

ISS (International Shareholder Services Inc.) has released its 2014 U.S. Policy updates, with a modification to the executive compensation section, changing the methodology of how they calculate the Relative Degree of Alignment (RDA). The RDA evaluates executive pay and performance relative to peers. Under the revised methodology, ISS will calculate the difference between the company’s…

A court ruling suggests there will be little tolerance if an employer in any way retaliates against an employee filing a lawsuit. The court confirmed that employees may not be fired for filing a lawsuit – even if the firing takes place three years later and with no direct evidence of retaliation. In Travers v.…

Great news for delivery workers who should be classified as employees and not independent contractors. In a swift decision last week, the Massachusetts Superior Court enforced the Independent Contractor law and decided that it was not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAA) of 1994. In Okeke v. Dynamex Operations East, Inc., the…

Payroll cards are seemingly ever-growing in popularity. They act just like a debit card and give you quick and easy access to your money. The employee doesn’t need a bank account, and the employer doesn’t have to pay check-cashing fees. The employer gives you a card, dumps the wages in your account, and everyone carries…

Contractors working on public works projects must pay their workers prevailing wages, even when the Department of Labor fails to set a prevailing wage rate for a particular job. In George et al v. National Water Main Cleaning Company et al, the contractor hired “catch basin cleaning” employees to clean state and city sewers. The…

Once limited to two or three years of recovery for unpaid wages under Massachusetts law, employees can now look back up to six years. This week, the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that employees could recover unpaid wages using common law breach of contract and other causes of action. Important? Absolutely. Under common law, employers may…