Health Insurance Rates have been released

Oregon’s health insurance exchange is moving forward and appears to be on track to keep their original timeline.  Individual and small group plans should go on sale in October 2013.  In July 2013 the exchange started approving health insurance rates that had been submitted in April by participating health insurance carriers.  A number of rates filings have been approved during the first two weeks of July.  You can see a sample of the approved rates at: http://www.oregonhealthrates.org/?pg=approved_rates.html 

Protecting Your Unemployment Account

Employers are often surprised at how easily a former employee can establish a successful unemployment claim.  With respect to unemployment claims, the largest misconception among employers is that terminating an employee for substandard performance will disqualify the individual from receiving unemployment benefits.  In most states, unless the employee’s behavior rises to a level of “misconduct,” the claimant will be deemed eligible for unemployment benefits.  Thus, terminating an employee for “poor performance,” “incompetence” or “inability to perform the job” will almost always qualify the former employee for unemployment benefits.

ACA Employer Mandate Delayed

A delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act was announced yesterday.  The mandate for businesses who employ 50 or more workers to provide health insurance has been delayed until 2015.  The delay is to provide more time to comply with the new rules and reporting requirements.

The individual and small business exchanges are still on track to open for enrollment on October 1.

TimeTrex – Information Security

Remember to not use a Social Security Number or date of birth in TimeTrex. 
Additionally, it is best not to use a partial of the SSN or DOB in TimeTrex in fields like an employee number or password.  If you would like to use a unique employee number please feel free to use the randomly generated employee number Cardinal assigns to all employees.  Your Cardinal representative will be able to provide you with that number.

Don’t Lean into My Cubicle Like That!

Sexual harassment is, by definition, a type of discrimination which includes gender-based harassment, bullying, or coercion of a sexual nature.  Any type of unwelcome or unwanted sexual advances, requests for favors, or other conduct that is used as a condition of employment may be considered unlawful sexual harassment. If a supervisor uses sexual favors as a basis of employment decision-making, whether between same-sex or opposite-sex individuals, this too may be considered sexual harassment in the workplace.  It is imperative that an employer has a thorough workplace policy in place which communicates the company’s zero-tolerance of any type of harassing  behavior, as well as what employees may do if they become victims of harassment.  Employers who are proactive in training employees and supervisors, and regularly enforce the organization’s stance against harassing and intimidating behavior in the workplace generally have reduced exposure to harassment-related liability. 

Labor Trends – Affordable Care Act

Working at Cardinal has afforded me the opportunity to interact with business owners all over Oregon. In the last few months I have noticed some trends related to the upcoming employer mandate requirements under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. To provide some background the employer mandate is a $2000 penalty per full time employee per year (note the first 30 are tax exempt) which only affects large businesses, those with 50 or more full-time employees or their equivalents. Small businesses, defined as having fewer than 50 full-time employees, do not face a penalty.

Among small employers that clearly have fewer than 50 full time employees there is an increased awareness that health insurance is an upcoming concern.  As I note in my recent Affordable Care Act presentations, many of these small business owners are waiting for

Employer Mandate vs. Individual Mandate

Over the past couple months I have been privileged to travel around Oregon to discuss the Affordable Care Act.   During the question section of my presentation I have been asked, ‘If the employer is required to pay a $2000 tax/penalty is it possible that the employee will have to pay a separate penalty as well?’  The short answer is yes, it is possible for both the employer as well as an employee to pay a penalty. Both the employer mandate penalty and individual mandate penalty are independent of one another.