Delaware Employment Law Blog

Summer means an influx of teen workers for many employers. Teen employees bring with them a unique set of legal issues of which businesses should be aware. Here are some ways to get ready for this year’s youth initiative.

Department of Labor

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has published a web page that’s loaded with information and suggestions to help employers keep their teen-aged workers safe and to keep themselves in compliance with child labor laws this summer. Not all employers are aware of state and federal restrictions on the activities in which teens are permitted to engage at work. Alert employers will want to review this page, click on the links, and plan the steps they will take to decrease the risk that their teen employees will be injured at work.

The Delaware Department of Labor (DDOL) also has information about state child labor laws available in booklet form. A brief summary is available on the DDOL's website.

Sexual Harassment Awareness

Employers should also take steps to address the special vulnerability of teen workers to sexual harassment. As an item on this blog noted a few weeks ago, an ABA Journal story reported that the number of teen-aged workers filing sexual harassment charges is on the rise. Teen workers are often part-time or seasonal, and may be in the workplace for the first time. They tend to fall between the cracks when it comes to training. Many restaurants, movie theaters and retail stores have teen-age supervisors and managers as well as workers. Teens tend not to realize that the standard of conduct at work is different from what’s permissible in a social setting.

Bottom Line

To minimize their risks, employers who hire teen-agers must make a strong effort to educate them (and their supervisors) about harassment, retaliation and workplace safety in a meaningful and understandable way.

Take the Pregnancy Discrimination Quiz at HR Hero and find out.

The HRhero.com website says this about the quiz:

Pregnant employees and those returning from maternity leave have rights regarding their employment. Check your knowledge of these rights by deciding how you would handle certain scenarios and then choosing the best answer.

The quiz was written by our own Adria Martinelli, who co-edits the Delaware Employment Law Letter with William W. Bowser and Scott A. Holt. 

Last month, Adria presented an audio conference on pregnancy discrimination, Pregnancy in the Workplace: Managing FMLA, ADA, and PDA Issues.  Adria also co-presented with Bill Bowser another terrific audio conference on pregnancy discrimination, Managing Pregnant Employees.  For more information about the conferences, see http://www.hrhero.com/audio/pregnancy/

To employers, recordkeeping, record retention, reporting, and notice requirements can seem like a complex algorithm of numbers and dates, precariously aligned against a backdrop of the numerous state and federal employment laws. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has unveiled yet another compliance tool for employers.

The newest "elaws advisor," which was unveiled earlier today, helps employers take the first step in any compliance objective--determining which of the DDOL's recordkeeping, reporting and notice requirements apply to them. The new Recordkeeping, Reporting and Notices elaws Advisor has been integrated into a "FirstStep" suite of advisors. Just like it sounds, the "FirstStep" online tools all focus on providing employers with the right starting point as they work towards implementing best practices throughout the organization. Also included in the suite are the revised and expanded FirstStep Poster Advisor and FirstStep Employment Law Overview Advisor.

"These Internet tools will make it easier for small business employers to learn about and comply with the federal laws that apply to them," said Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao.

The elaws advisors are free, Web-based tools, making them easily accessible by employees and employers alike. By asking a series of questions, the advisors simulate a conversation with a Department of Labor expert and guide users to customized information explaining the requirements of each law. For example, by asking questions such as size of business, location and type of industry through multiple choice or yes and no questions, the FirstStep Employment Law Overview Advisor determines which federal employment laws govern the user's business. The advisor then provides information from the Labor Department's Employment Law Guide on the basic provisions of these laws.

The new FirstStep Recordkeeping, Reporting and Notices Advisor summarizes the paperwork requirements for each law. The FirstStep Poster Advisor, which can be used to download and print off Labor Department posters for free, was revised to include information on where the posters must be displayed in the workplace, and what size and language requirements apply to each.

This suite of FirstStep elaws advisors is available at www.dol.gov/elaws/firststep.

The DOL offers more than 25 other elaws advisors covering a wide range of employment law topics, such as minimum wage and overtime, child labor, veterans' workplace rights, health and retirement benefits, and workplace safety and health. For more information, visit www.dol.gov/elaws.

You may find this hard to believe but I am about to use the words "S.E.C." and "cool" in the same sentence. It's true. The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission has an interesting (read: cool) new online tool. It's Executive Pay Finder allows you to search SEC filings to find out how much and in what form the nation's top executives are being compensated. There are currently 500 companies included in the database. The SEC explains the tool:

This interactive tool is designed to illustrate some of the ways that interactive data can improve the quality and usability of executive compensation disclosure. It relies on interactive data tags that were applied by the Commission to the summary executive compensation disclosure in the public filings of 500 large companies for 2006.

The tool allows you to search for a specific company, by revenue, or even by industry. And that's just the tip of the iceberg for its search capabilities. Once you find the company or companies that interest you, the tool actually gives you the capability to compile them into a single table for comparison purposes and then, you can even send your data to a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet, create charts and graphs, Oh my!!!

For those of you who may be working on a compensation audit or getting ready to revamp your pay structure, this tool may provide some helpful insight. For the rest of us, it's just plain interesting cool!

The U.S. Department of Labor announced a new addition to its already voluminous online resources. The website will help workers plan for retirement.

The website provides free access to a series of interactive worksheets were developed as a companion to a 2006 publication entitled "Taking the Mystery Out of Retirement Planning."** The worksheets are designed to help calculate their income and savings as well as their projected expenses in retirement.

The site is designed for people who are 10 to 15 years away from retirement but can also be helpful to recent retirees.

**Free copies of the booklet are available by calling the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) toll-free at 866-444-3272 and online at www.dol.gov/ebsa (under Publications).