Chapter 2 - US Laws and Regulations Flashcards
(109 cards)
The Clayton Act - 1914
- modified the Sherman Anti-Trust Act by prohibiting mergers and acquisitions that would lessen competition
- prohibited a single person from being a director of two or more competing organizations
- restricts the use of injunctions against labor and legalized peaceful strikes, picketing, and boycotts
The Consumer Credit Protection Act - 1968
- Congress expressed limits to the amount of wages that can be garnished or withheld in any one week by an employer to satisfy creditors
- prohibits employee dismissal because of garnishment for any one indebtedness
The Copeland “Anti-Kickback” Act - 1934
- precludes a federal contractor or subcontractor from inducing an employee to give up any part of his or her wages to the employer for the benefit of having a job
The Copyright Act - 1976
- offers protection of “original works” for authors so others may not print, duplicate, distribute, or sell their work
- 1998: Copyright Term Extension Act further extended copyright protection to the duration of the author’s life plus 70 years for general copyrights and to 95 years for works made for hire and works copyrighted before 1978
The Davis-Bacon Act - 1931
- requires contractors and subcontractors on certain federally funded or assisted construction projects worth more than $2,000 in the US to pay wages and fringe benefits at least equal to those prevailing in the local area where the work is performed
- applies only to laborers and mechanics
- allows trainees and apprentices to be paid less than predetermined rates under certain circumstances
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act - 2010
- wide range of mandates affecting all federal financial regulatory agencies and almost every part of the nation’s financial services industry
- a nonbinding vote for shareholders on executive compensation, golden parachutes, and return of executive compensation based on inaccurate financial statements
- requirements to report CEO pay compared to the average employee compensation and provision of financial rewards for whistleblowers
The Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (EGTRRA) - 2001
- modifications to the Internal Revenue Code that adjust pension vesting schedules, increasing retirement plan limits, permitting pretax catch-up contributions by participants older than 50 in certain places (which are not tested for discrimination when made available to the entire workforce), and modifying distribution and rollover rules
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) - 1986
- composed of two pieces of legislation: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communication Act
- provide rules for access, use, disclosure, interpretation, and privacy protections of electronic communications, and they provide the possibility of both civil and criminal penalties for violations
- prohibit interceptions of email sin transmission and access to emails in storage
- recording without notice can be a violation of this Act
The Employee Polygraph Protection Act - 1988
- prohibits the use of lie detector test for job applicants and employees of companies engaged in interstate commerce
- exceptions are made for certain situations, including law enforcement and national security
- there is a federal posted requirement
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) - 1974
- doesn’t require employers to establish pension plans, but governs how those plans are managed once they have been established
- establishes uniform minimum standards to ensure that employee benefit plans are established and maintained in a fair and financially sound manner
- protects employees covered by a pension plan from losses in benefits due to job changes, plant closings, bankruptcies, or mismanagement
- protects plan beneficiaries
- covers most employers engaged in interstate commerce
- public-sector employees and many churches are not subject to ERISA
- employers that offer retirement plans must also conform with the IRS code in order to receive tax advantages
The Equal Pay Act (an Amendment to FLSA) - 1963
- equal pay requirements apply to all employers
- amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
- prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sex by paying wages to employees at a rate less than the rate paid to employees of the opposite sex for equal work on jobs requiring equal skill, effort, and responsibility, and which are performed under similar working conditions
- does not address the concept of compensable worth
The FAA Modernization and Reform Act - 2012
- amend the Railway Labor Act to change union certification election processes in the railroad and airline industries and impose greater oversight of the regulatory activities of the National Mediation Board (NMB)
- requires the Governemnet Accountability Office (GAO) initially to evaluate the NMB’s certificaiton procedures and then audit the NMB’s operations every two years
The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT) - 2003
- amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, providing certain requirements to third-party investigations of employee misconduct charges
- employers are released from obligations to disclose requirements and obtain employee consent if the investigation involves suspected misconduct, a violation of the law or regulations, or a violation of preexisting written employer policies
- a written plan to prevent identity theft is required
The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) - 1970, amended 2011
- the first major legislation to regulate the collection, dissemination, and use of consumer information, including consumer credit information
- requires employers to notify any individual in writing if a credit report may be used in making an employment decision
- employers must also get written authorization from the subject first
- protects the privacy of background investigation information and provides methods for ensuring that information is accurate
- employers who take adverse action against a job applicant or current employee based on information contained in the prospective or current employee’s consumer report will have additional disclosures to make to that individual
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) - 1938
- federal laws that establish the foundation for employee treatment
- a major influence in how people are paid, in employment of young people, and in how records are to be kept on employment issues such as hours of work
- introduced a maximum 44-hour, 7-day workweek
- established a national minimum wage
- guaranteed time-and-a-half for overtime in certain jobs
- prohibited most employment of minors in “oppressive child labor”
- applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce, unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage
- the first federal law to require employers to maintain records on employee race and sex identification
Provisions and Protections of FLSA
- covered employees include public agencies, private employers who annual gross sales exceed $500,000, those operating a hospital or a school for mentally or physically disabled or gifted children, and a preschool, an elementary or secondary school, or an institution of higher education (profit or non-profit)
- if an employee’s work regularly involves commerce between states, they would be covered (communications or transportation; regular use of mail/telephone/telegraph for insterstate communication or keep records of interstate transactions; handle shipping and receiving goods moving in interstate commerce; regularly cross state lines in the courst of employment; work for independent employers who contract to do clerical, custodial, maintenance, or other work for firms engaged in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for interstate commerce
- the FLSA establishes a federal minimum wage that has been raised from time to time since the law was originally passed
- the FLSA prohibits shipment of goods in interstate commerce that were produced in violation of the minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor, or special minimum wage provisions of the law
Recordkeeping Requirements of FLSA
- methods for determining whether a job is exempt or nonexempt from the overtime pay requirements of the act
- records include employee’s full name and SSN, address (including ZIP), birth date (if younger than 19), sex, occupation, time and day of week when employee’s workweek begins, hours worked each day and total hours worked each workweek, basis on which employee’s wages are paid (hourly, weekly, piecework), regular hourly pay rate, total daily or weekly straight-time earnings, total overtime earnings for the workweek, all additions or deductions frmo the employee’s wages, total wages paid each pay period, date of payment and the pay period covered by the payment
- there is no limit in the FLSA to the number of hours employees ages 16 and older may work in any workweek
- employers must retain all payroll records, collective bargaining agreements, sales, and purchase records for at least 3 years
- time cards, piecework records, wage rate tables, and work and time schedules should be retained for at least 2 years
- a workplace poster is required to notify employees of the federal minimum wage
Federal Child Labor Provisions of the FLSA
- workers younger than 14 are restricted to jobs such as newspaper delivery to local customers, babysitting on a casual basis, acting in movies/TV/radio/theater, working as a home worker gathering evergreens and making evergreen wreaths
- no person under 18 may work in any of the 17 most hazardous jobs (manufacturing or storing explosives; driving a motor vehicle or working as an outside helper on motor vehicles; coal mining; forest fire fighting and forest fire prevention, timber tract, forestry service, and occupations in logging and sawmilling; using power-driven woodworking machines; exposure to radioactive substances and ionizing radiation; using power-driven hoisting apparatuses; using power-driven metal-forming, punching, and shearing machines; mining other than coal; using power-driven meat-processing machines, slaughtering, meat and poultry packing, processing or rendering; using power-driven bakery machines; using balers, compactor, and power-driven paper-products machines; manufacturing brick, tile, and related products; using power-driven circular saws, band saws, guillotine shears, chainsaws, reciprocating saws, wood chippers, and abrasive cutting discs; trenching or excavating
- workers age 14 and 15: all work must be performed outside school hours; may not work more than 3 hours on a school day, including Friday; may not work more than 18 hours per week when school is in session; may not work more than 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week when school is not in session; may not work before 7a or after 7p except from June 1 - Labor Day, when nighttime shifts are extended to 9p; a work permit from the school district is required until they reach the age of 18
- for workers age 16 and 17 there is no resctriction on the number of hours that can be worked per week
Overtime Computation in the FLSA
- required at a rate of 1.5 times the normal rate of pay for all hours worked over 40 in a single workweek
- an employer may designate the day and time a workweek begins but that must be maintained until there is a legitimate business reason for changing it
- compensating time off is permitted under the FLSA if it is given the same rates required for overtime pay
Enforcement of the FLSA
- provisions are enforced by the US Dept. of Labor’s Wage & Hour Divisions
- if a violation is found, the agency has the authority to make recommendations for changes that would bring the employer into compliance
- retaliation against any employee for filing a complaint under the FLSA, or in any other way availing him/herself of the legal rights it offers, is subject to additional penalties
- willful violations may bring criminal prosecution and fines up to $10,000
- employers who get convicted a second time for willful violations can find themselves in prison
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) - 1997
- prohibits American companies from making bribery payments to foreign officials for the purpose of obtaining or keeping business
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act - 2009
- requires that anyone with custody of personal health records send notification to affected individuals if their personal health records have been disclosed, or the employer believes they have been disclosed, to any unauthorized person
- made several changes to HIPAA, including the establishment of a federal standard for security breach notifications that requires covered entities, in the event of a breach of any (protected) health information (PHI), to notify each individual whose PHI has been disclosed without authorization
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) - 1996
- ensures that individuals who leave or lose their jobs can obtain health coverage, even if they or someone in their family has a serious illness or injury or is pregnant
- provides privacy requirements related to medical records for individuals as young as 12
- limits exclusions for preexisting conditions and guarantees renewability of health coverage to employers and employees, allowing people to change jobs without the worry of loss of coverage
- restricts the ability of employers to impose actively-at-work requirements as preconditions for health plan eligibility
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) - 1952
- the foundation on which all following immigration laws have been built
- addresses employment eligibliity and employment verification
- defines conditions for the temporary and permanent employment of aliens in the US (alien = any person lacking citizenship or status as a national of the US: resident or nonresident, immigrant or nonimmigrant, documented and undocumented)