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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Washington now has several new laws that further prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.

This morning former USC football coach Steve Sarkisian filed suit in California, seeking $30.1 million in damages, alleging that his former employer failed to accommodate a disability recognized under California law, alcoholism.