The person providing personal, in-home senior or adult care for your loved ones is considered a domestic employee, and it is important that you memorialize his or her duties and responsibilities as well as the terms of employment (e.g. duties, compensation, benefits, transportation, etc.) in an employment contract. Domestic employees come with many potential issues […]
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Protecting Your Family and Avoiding a Nanny Nightmare
Do you know that your nanny is an employee who has many of the benefits and protections afforded by federal and state employment laws? For example, she may be entitled to overtime pay if she stays those extra few hours so you two can have a date night. Or she may be entitled to worker’s […]
Will Valuation Discounts for Family-Controlled Entities be Eliminated?
Many families establish Family Limited Partnerships (FLPs) or Limited Liability Companies (LLCs) and then gift interests in these entities to their children. In doing so, they take advantage of valuation discounts (discounts for the lack of marketability of a family-controlled entity and for minority interests), and pass significantly more value than could be claimed for […]
City of Seattle Enacts New Open Housing Rules
In an attempt to address concerns of housing affordability, the Seattle City Council approved an ordinance that seeks to ensure access to rental housing for tenants while imposing new rules on landlords. The new ordinance is set to go into effect on September 7, 2016. In general, the ordinance includes the following changes in Seattle’s […]
City of Seattle Proposes Secure Scheduling Ordinance
We alerted attendees of our Spring Employment Breakfast that the City of Seattle was conducting a survey regarding shift scheduling to consider implementing regulations surrounding shift scheduling. On August 9, the City issued its proposed regulations. Many businesses will find them onerous; at this time, the proposed regulations, if adopted, will apply only to quick […]
Washington Court Broadens Definition of “Workers”
As our blog followers and Breakfast attendees know, the Helsell Fetterman Employment & Labor Law group has been addressing the dangers of misclassification of employees as independent contractors, and increasingly strict interpretations of who is an independent contractor. This trend is further exemplified in the new case handed down by the Washington State Supreme Court, […]
New Overtime Rule Released by the Department of Labor
On May 18, 2016, the Department of Labor released the long anticipated final regulations regarding the exemption from overtime pay. What you need to know: New rule raises the salary threshold from $455/week and $23,660/year to $913/week and $47,476/year – (estimated by DOL to affect 76,000 workers in Washington State and 4.2 million in the […]
FMLA Guide for Employers
Employers who want a quick guide to the Family and Medical Leave Act can access the newly published “Employer’s Guide to the Family and Medical Leave Act”, which is available on the DOL website. Chock full of the Department of Labor’s interpretation of the FMLA, this 76 page manual is a pretty basic reminder on […]
To Our Federal Contractor Clients
The U.S. Department of Labor recently published the proposed regulations to implement President Obama’s Executive Order 13706 that established paid sick leave for Federal Contractors. As you’ll recall, the Executive Order requires federal contractors and subcontractors to provide employees with not less than 1 hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked on […]
New Requirements Under Seattle Labor Ordinances
The City of Seattle has approved a comprehensive set of amendments, the 2015 Wage Theft Prevention and Labor Standards Harmonization Ordinance to Seattle’s labor standards laws. While effective as of April 1, 2016, many of these new requirements are in “soft launch”, that is, there will be no enforcement or penalty until September 1, 2016. Some of […]