PEO Brokers of America » Workers’ Compensation

OSHA Releases New Compliance Poster

admin — Tue, 12 May 2015 17:57:04 +0000

OSHA Releases New Compliance Poster

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released a new version of its compliance poster, last updated in 2007.

OSHA’s compliance poster is free and can be downloaded and printed out. Employers must display the poster in a conspicuous place where workers can see it. Previous versions of the poster do not need to be replaced.

The newly designed poster informs workers of their rights to request an OSHA inspection of their workplace, receive information and training on job hazards, report a work-related injury or illness, and raise safety and health concerns with their employer or OSHA without being retaliated against.

The poster informs employers of their legal obligation to provide a safe workplace. In addition, it has been updated to include the new reporting obligations for employers, who must now report every fatality and hospitalization, amputation, and loss of an eye. It also informs employers of their responsibilities to train all workers in a language and vocabulary they can understand, comply with OSHA standards, and post citations at or near the place of an alleged violation.

@SHRM

The OSHA Job Safety and Health: It’s the Law poster, available for free from OSHA, informs workers of their rights under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. All covered employers are required to display the poster in their workplace. Employers do not need to replace previous versions of the poster. Employers must display the poster in a conspicuous place where workers can see it.

You can print out your copy using this link: High resolution PDF

For more information on how PEO Brokers of America can help your company manage risk and safety issues, contact us today!

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Jacksonville, Florida, roofing contractor ignores fact that fall protection can be the difference between life and death Great White Construction disregards hazards again; faces $184K in penalties

admin — Thu, 30 Apr 2015 19:22:58 +0000

Jacksonville, Florida, roofing contractor ignores fact that fall protection can be the difference between life and death
Great White Construction disregards hazards again; faces $184K in penalties

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Since 2013, 294 workers have been killed by falls, the leading cause of death in the construction trade. These incidents can often be prevented when employers use proper safety protections. Unfortunately for its employees, Great White Construction Inc. has repeatedly put the safety of its workers at risk, the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors found.

Worker on roof using fall protection

In September and October 2014, Great White employees were seen working on roofs at two job sites in Jacksonville without fall protection. The contractor received six citations for safety violations at the sites on Queensway Drive and Melissa Ray Drive, the latest in its history of exposing its workers to fall hazards. Proposed penalties total $184,000.

“The crew leader told the inspector on-site that he was given proper equipment, training and knew the regulations, but chose to ignore them,” said Brian Sturtecky, OSHA’s area director in Jacksonville. “An employer cannot pick and choose when to follow safety standards, and OSHA will continue to cite violations and issue penalties when employers fail in their responsibility to protect workers.”

Since 2012, OSHA has inspected Great White sites five times and issued multiple citations for repeated and serious violations of residential fall protection and other safety standards. OSHA issued two willful citations to the contractor for letting employees work on roofs at heights of 8 and 12 feet without fall protection. A willful violation is one committed with intentional, knowing or voluntary disregard for the law’s requirement, or with plain indifference to worker safety and health.

Repeated violations were issued for not ensuring that workers wore eye protection, which exposed them to eye injuries from flying debris or nails. Two other violations also were cited for unsafe wiring and not training workers how to use fall protection systems. A repeated violation exists when an employer has been cited previously for the same or a similar violation of a standard, regulation, rule or order at any facility in federal enforcement states within the last five years. The company received citations for similar violations in 2012 and 2013 at job sites in Florida.

For more information on how PEO Brokers of America can help provide your company with a comprehensive safety program and help with OSHA compliance, contact us today!

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When is it time to admit that your company doesn’t know Human Resources?

admin — Fri, 27 Mar 2015 13:17:41 +0000

Your employees are your biggest asset and your BIGGEST LIABILITY. When is it time to admit that your company doesn’t know Human Resources? As a business owner, your main priority is to be able to pay your employees and increase profits to grow the business. Stop worrying about keeping up with federal and state laws, shopping around every year to try to find the best health care plans, and most importantly stop googling when you have employee related issues.

Outsource your HR related issues and get your time back. Recruit and retain better employees by offering better healthcare coverage while also stabilizing your medical increases in single digits. Shift your workers’ compensation related risk to a PEO and focus on your business while lowering your premiums.

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Hungry Jacks Fined $90,000 After Employee Was Severely Injured at Work

admin — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 15:43:50 +0000

Hungry Jacks Fined $90,000 After Employee Was Severely Injured at Work

Hungry Jacks was fined a whopping $90,000 and additional costs by the Industrial Court after an incident caused a worker to suffer from third-degree burns while performing work tasks at the Edwardstown restaurant.

As retold, in June 2012, a young worker of the company was ordered by his immediate supervisor the very basic task of filtering cooking oil from one of the deep fryers; this task requires workers to make use of a mobile filter.

While going about the task however, the worker unfortunately slipped and fell into the open top of the said mobile filtration unit, which apparently had resulted in hot oil splashing right on the worker and causing severe burns.

It is alarming to note that no ambulance was called despite the same worker being in severe pain, suffering from the sustained third-degree burns on his right hand, forearm, and the right side of his torso or an estimated more than 10 percent of his body, all requiring major skin grafts.

Based on the records, the young worker came with less than a month’s experience about the delegated task, and prior to the said incident, had very little experience in filtering cooking oil from the fryers.

Under the former Occupational Health, Safety and Welfare Act 1986, Hungry Jacks was prosecuted for failing to make some critical and fundamental needs in the workplace: to provide plant safe conditions, to maintain safety precautionary measures and systems of work, and to provide a system or program that ensured that workers get the most appropriate and prompt medical attention and treatment as soon as reasonably practical immediately after a major injury.

Executive Director Bryan Russell of SafeWork SA explained that the case clearly emphasised the vulnerability of young workers including all the more popular and commonly known and widely understood dangers that comes along with cooking hot oil.

The executive director further discussed the significance of young workers to be given complete and comprehensive induction, training, as well as supervision and to be made aware of the importance of the use of personal protective equipment that is more appropriate to the task delegated to them to ensure that they are kept safe while at work.

Mr. Russell said, “No worker should experience an injury during the course of their duties. Everyone needs to remain vigilant in managing workplace risks, particularly in those areas where young and inexperienced workers are present.”

The said incident was not a first for the company Hungry Jacks. The company has earlier been prosecuted for an incident in July 2003 also had a young worker reported to have sustained severe and serious burns from hot cooking oil.

After the said incident, Hungry Jacks continued to review its procedures and policies on all aspects of oil filtering and have installed self-filtering deep fryers for their restaurants in South Australia. They have likewise committed to allocate nearly $6 million to have all their existing fryers across the country replaced with self-filtering fryers.

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Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) In Workers Compensation

admin — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 17:41:38 +0000

Professional Employer Organizations (PEOs) In Workers Compensation

Professional Employer Organization (PEO) is a different approach many small and medium size employers take to obtain workers’ compensation insurance. The employer outsources the responsibilities of workers’ compensation insurance along with human resource services, payroll (including IRS and state reporting), employee benefits and risk management to the PEO. The PEO takes over the responsibility for these areas allowing the employer to focus on the employer’s business operations.

PEO Becomes Co-Employer & Leases Employees To Employer

For the PEO to provide these services, the PEO becomes the co-employer and leases the employees to the employer. A PEO differs from a staffing agency in that the employer retains the responsibility for hiring and firing of employees and must provide the PEO with the initial benefits information for each employee along with any changes in employee benefits (most notably salary changes).

As the PEO is providing benefits for numerous employers; it can use the combined size of all the employers in the PEO to obtain volume discounts normally reserved for the very large employers. This larger size allows the PEO to provide better health insurance, disability insurance, 401K plans and other benefits that a small employer frequently cannot afford.

While better employee benefits at a lower price is a selling point of PEOs, the most frequent reason an employer joins a PEO is for better control of the employer’s workers’ compensation cost.

PEO Uses Economies of Scale To Obtain Workers Compensation

The PEO uses the economies of scale, to shop for and obtain workers’ compensation insurance. Most PEO will have insurance with the large, nationwide workers’ compensation insurance companies. PEOs that restrict their services to one state or geographical region may utilize a smaller insurer. Some of the large PEOs will have their own workers’ compensation claims handling unit with an insurer providing the coverage.

PEOs improve the employer’s cash flow by reducing or eliminating the down payments frequently associated with the purchase of workers’ compensation insurance. Depending on the size of the employer joining the PEO, and the total of all business services being provided through the PEO, the PEO may allow the employer to pay work comp premiums on a monthly basis similar to a Pay As You Go program provided by some work comp insurers.

Employers with a high experience modification factor, E-mod, (also referred to as an X-mod in some states), frequently join a PEO as the employer takes on the E-mod of the PEO. Usually, but not always, the E-mod of the PEO is about 1.0. This is good for an employer who has an unusual string of accidents or a few bad accidents. However, the employer with a high E-mod should realize the PEO is not going to let one client employers’ bad safety practices raise the work comp rates for all the other employers in the PEO. The PEO is going to require safety improvements and will be providing risk management guidance that must be followed.

PEOs Normally Mandate Workers Compensation Cost Containment

As the PEO’s cost for workers’ compensation insurance impacts its relationship with all the employer members, PEOs normally mandate that each client employer has a return to work program that puts employees back to work on modified duty as soon as the medical provider allows light duty work.

The PEO will also mandate the employer has a safety program and retains the right to perform safety inspections. If the PEO finds the employer is not living up to the premises of the employer’s safety program, the PEO has right to sever its business relationship with the client employer.

If you consider a PEO as an alternative to your current workers’ compensation insurance program, the following details of the PEO program should be verified before your company joins the PEO:

• The name of the work comp insurance carrier (should be rated A or higher by A. M. Best)

• The name of the third party administrator and their performance history (if the claims are not handled by the work comp insurer)

• The cost of the workers’ compensation insurance

• The experience of the PEO in your industry

• The risk management assistance and the safety program provided by the PEO

• The PEO requires a return-to-work program of all members of the PEO

• The cost of the payroll, human resources and other functions provided by the PEO

If you would like assistance in analyzing whether or not a PEO is a good fit for your company, please contact us.

by Rebecca Shafer, J.D.@ LexisNexus

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Bracing for Obamacare, Some Businesses Try PEOs

admin — Wed, 18 Mar 2015 17:37:25 +0000

Some entrepreneurs are turning to professional employer organizations to navigate health reform’s complexities.

ESCO Communications, an Indianapolis-based audio/visual equipment installer, has provided health insurance for its 100 employees for more than 40 years, but when CEO Chip Roth was faced with 40 percent price hike on the company’s plan last year, he realized he needed to make a change. The cost increase–coupled with expected complexities of the Affordable Care Act, often referred to as Obamacare–led Roth to WorkSmart Systems, a local professional employer organization that pools health benefits for the employees of 200 small companies.

“Health insurance was the real driver,” Roth says. “By joining a larger pool and spreading the risk around, we were able to keep our rates the same as they were.”

With insurance premiums on the rise and health reform kicking into high gear, many small companies are looking for strength in numbers. Some are joining PEOs so they can provide a menu of affordable health plans to their employees, and outsource the complex administrative tasks associated with them. Matt Thomas, founder and president of WorkSmart, says his company is on track to double its sales in the three years ending in December 2015. “A lot of that has to do with the Affordable Care Act,” he says. “Even larger companies that wouldn’t normally look at PEOs are looking now, so they can avoid some of the ramifications of [the law].”

PEOs, available for the past 30 years, provide health benefits and handle human resources tasks, including payroll, workers’ compensation insurance and other benefits. And because a PEO does all of this for a group of companies, rather than just one, it can typically achieve economies of scale that individual companies can’t. The most recent data indicates that the sector is growing: PEO industry revenue reached $92 billion in 2012, a 13.6% increase over 2010, the year the health legislation was signed into law, according to the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations in Alexandria, Va.

PEOs generally charge a flat monthly fee per employee or paycheck, or they take a percentage of each client’s total payroll. If a PEO does its job well, it should generate enough savings for their clients to offset those fees, says Jay Starkman, founder and CEO of Engage PEO in St. Petersburg, Fla. “Insurance companies reward the aggregation of [employees], so oftentimes PEOs are able to deliver a 5 percent savings to their clients,” on health care, he says.

PEOs also say they save small companies the hassle and cost of hiring their own in-house HR staff, who could cost more than $80,000 a year in salary and benefits a piece. “A PEO does all the stuff that’s not essential to your core business,” Starkman says.

There can be drawbacks to joining PEOs, however. Because a PEO acts as a co-employer, you may feel as if you’re losing some degree of control over your employees. And how competitive a rate your PEO gets for health insurance will depend on the overall demographics and health status of all the employees it is insuring–factors that are out of your control and that will likely change over time.

A big reason PEOs are seeing a bump in interest these days is that many small companies simply need help wrapping their brains around the new health law, says Pat Cleary, CEO of NAPEO. All companies with 50 or more full-time employees will have to offer health insurance, but the intricacies of complying with the law can be hard to navigate. “The perils and pitfalls that are in there for any small business are significant,” Cleary says. “The biggest advantage, in my view, of going to a PEO is to be able to say, ‘Figure this out for me.'”

Frank Romero, chief revenue operations officer of Evanston, Ill.-based Grocer Exchange, a network of independent supermarkets, says he’s more comfortable with health reform since he signed on with Engage PEO in January of this year. “The owners of our supermarkets, which are typically manned at a rate of 30 to 40 people per store, need this, because they can’t afford to do this administration themselves,” Romero says. “And the PEO brings to the table benefits savings that they could never get themselves.”

By: Entrepreneur Magazine

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Top 5 Startup Payroll and HR Mistakes

admin — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 15:17:31 +0000

Top 5 Startup Payroll and HR Mistakes

Startups are natural rule breakers. You’ve got to ruffle a few feathers and disrupt the status quo if you want to build the next Facebook. But there’s one area where startups definitely don’t want to break the rules: payroll and HR.

Startups that don’t comply with payroll and HR laws can face serious legal and financial consequences. Some penalties are even severe enough to drive them out of business. With that in mind, we’ve put together this list of the Top 5 Payroll and HR Mistakes that every startup should be absolutely sure to avoid.

1. Commingling personal and business finances
In the early days of a startup, founders may be tempted to put off separating personal and business finances for as long as possible, reasoning that they can save time and money by paying employees and contractors directly out of their own pockets.

This is short-term thinking than can have dire consequences down the road. Eventually that startup will have to disentangle all its expenses and pay back taxes.

If the startup is ever sued or audited, a blurry distinction of personal and business expenses can render a founder’s personal assets vulnerable to court seizure. A startup could even be stripped of its corporate status. Most founders think, “That will never happen to me.” But it often does.

2. Misclassifying employees as independent contractors
Treating an employee as an independent contractor is one of the most costly mistakes a startup can make. Employers do it because they don’t have to pay taxes, insurance or overtime to independent contractors. They also don’t have to give contractors benefits.

Misclassification is especially common in startups, where many practice “try before you buy” hiring. Yet if the responsibilities of the job don’t materially change when an contractor “converts” into an employee, the IRS considers that worker as having been an employee all along.

There are the state penalties, too. In California, the penalty for deliberate misclassification ranges from $5,000 to $15,000 for each violation.

What makes an employee? It varies state-by-state, but the basic legal definition relates to how much “control” an employer has over when, where and how an employee works, and for how long. If the length of her engagement is indefinite, then she’s an employee.

3. Managing payroll AND compliance
Payroll is so hard to do, and business screw it up so often, that the IRS penalizes about 1 in 3 business for payroll errors. The complexity of managing quarterly tax withholdings at the local, state and federal level…. it easily adds up to a full-time job, even for a business with just a couple of employees. That’s why most businesses use a payroll service.

But payroll services only get you so far. Startups still need compliance, like Worker’s Comp, EPLI and Unemployment Insurance. These are required in most states, including New York and California. Then there’s new hire reporting, I-9 documentation and healthcare. Compliance overhead in even the smallest of startups quickly escalates.

That’s why many savvy startups use a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) to manage payroll and compliance. A PEO manages a startup’s payroll, including myriad taxes, and ensures compliance with all required insurance and reporting. A PEO can even offer great deals on healthcare plans and other benefits.

4. Overpaying for healthcare and benefits
Startup competition is fierce these days. If you want to attract top tier talent, especially developers, you’ve got to offer excellent benefits, particularly healthcare.

But even “good enough for now” healthcare plans are expensive, particularly for smaller companies, who pay more for less coverage. It’s the law of leverage at work: the larger the company’s employee base, the sweeter the deal.

What’s a startup to do? Consider a Professional Employer Organization (PEO).

A PEO is a company that uses a legal arrangement known as co-employment to bargain for and administer healthcare and benefits packages, thus securing better terms than a startup could on its own.

PEOs offer savings on medical, dental and vision plans, as well as 401(k), typically available only to much larger companies. PEOs even handle the burdensome paperwork of regulatory filings and plan administration.

5. Frustrating employees with endless paperwork and confusing software
Nobody likes paperwork, especially not fast-moving startups. Yet many businesses continue to use outmoded HR processes and legacy software. Stop the madness!

BY: Justworks

Fortunately PEO Brokers of America makes it easy for a new business to get started with a PEO. Starting a business is hard enough without the frustrations of knowing the laws regarding payroll and HR.

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Ashley Furniture faces $1.76M OSHA fine for alleged safety violations, injuries at Arcadia plant

admin — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 14:18:16 +0000

Federal workplace safety regulators on Monday slapped Ashley Furniture Industries with $1.76 million in penalties after documenting 1,037 worker injuries due to allegedly unsafe conditions or equipment at the company’s Arcadia plant over the past three years.

The allegations were categorically denied by Ashley.

Investigators from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said they identified 38 safety violations at the furniture-making factory 170 miles northwest of Madison that contributed to the injuries suffered by 20 percent of its workforce. Classified as willful, repeated or serious, the alleged violations carry fines of $1,766,000.

The injuries included one in July 2014 that prompted the OSHA inspection, in which a man lost three fingers while operating what regulators in a statement Monday called “a dangerous woodworking machine without required safety mechanisms.” More than 100 of the injuries involved similar machinery, as Ashley Furniture threw out federal standards and its own corporate safety manuals in pursuit of speed and profits, OSHA said.

“The company apparently blamed the victims for their own injuries, but there is clear evidence that injuries were caused by the unsafe conditions created by the company,” said David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor of occupational safety and health. “OSHA is committed to making sure that the total disregard Ashley Furniture has shown to safety stops here and now.”

The Arcadia-based company, described by OSHA as the country’s largest furniture retailer and Trempealeau County’s largest employer, emphatically disagreed with “each and every one” of OSHA’s charges and called the proposed penalties “grossly inappropriate and overzealous” in a statement issued by spokesman Jason Lockington.

Ashley also maintained OSHA’s announcement Monday was “not a finding of fact,” but rather “only an allegation,” and said it would provide evidence disputing all the charges “in the proper legal setting.”

OSHA said the company had 15 business days to comply, request an informal conference with an OSHA area director or contest the findings with the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

A State Journal review of online OSHA records shows Ashley Furniture has paid $20,344 in fines for 22 health and safety violations classified as “serious” or “other” in eight other OSHA cases filed at Ashley locations around the country over the past five years, including a $2,000 fine for a safety violation in January at the Arcadia plant involving an amputation. Many of those eight cases were resolved after formal or informal settlements or other adjustments reduced the number of violations and fine amounts originally charged by OSHA.

But the action announced Monday goes far beyond the scope of the earlier cases, with far more serious allegations of wrongdoing in addition to the much larger financial penalty being sought. For example, none of the previous violations was classified as willful or repeated.

The current alleged violations include not training workers on safety procedures and lacking adequate drenching facilities for workers exposed to corrosive materials. OSHA also alleges the company didn’t take the necessary steps to protect workers from being injured by moving machine parts, and did not prevent woodworking machines from unintentionally starting when workers performed tooling and blade changes.

Some machines also were not equipped with readily accessible emergency stop buttons, according to OSHA.

Ashley in a statement countered that employee safety was an “absolute priority” and said it had lowered its incident rate by 14 percent and its rate of days away, restricted or transferred by 28 percent in the past five years.

According to Lockington, the company has about 4,750 employees in Wisconsin. Thirteen Ashley Furniture HomeStores operate in Wisconsin, including seven corporate stores and six that are independently owned and operated. Ashley also has additional manufacturing facilities in Independence and Whitehall, both near Arcadia.

With annual revenues of $3.85 billion last year, Ashley employs about 20,000 workers at 30 locations nationally, OSHA said. Forbes listed Ashley as the 117th-largest private company in the U.S.

By Karen Rivedal | Wisconsin State Journal

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Employee Benefits Cost Advantages to Restaurants that outsource HR

admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2015 20:51:10 +0000

When a restaurant considers outsourcing its HR functions, it normally takes into account some estimated employee benefits cost advantages. But many of the advantages go beyond having your employees take advantage of group benefits rates through the PEO company.

By using an outsource, restaurant owners can relieve themselves of the costly administrative burdens of managing:

Claims management
Direct Deposits
Payroll Taxes
Applying the complex laws governing wages and tips that can make managing restaurant payrolls extremely difficult to manage.

A PEO can help reduce the employee benefits cost and the risk of compliance penalties through:

Arranging for competitive health coverage.
Creating a I-9 compliance evaluation, which ensures that all employees are compliant with INS regulations and avoiding penalties.
Performing a payroll process audit to make recommendations to stay in compliance with Fair Labor Standards Act regulations.

In a recent survey, the National Association of Professional Employer Organizations (NAPEO) found that a small business owner will spend 10 percent more time complying with workplace regulations than they did ten years ago.

Employee benefits cost reduction when firing or laying off staff.

PEOs can help restaurants make informed choices when planning to offer benefits to workers that will be fired or be a part of a layoff. Whether a company has an overworked HR staff in-house or no HR at all, a PEO allows restaurant owners to spend more time focusing on managing their restaurant.

By: Modern Business Associates

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Employers To Face More Litigation In 2015 As Plaintiff Lawyers Swoop In

admin — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 14:53:22 +0000

Employers To Face More Litigation In 2015 As

Plaintiff Lawyers Swoop In

By: Daniel Fisher @ Forbes

The good news for companies that issue stock — dramatically fewer securities lawsuits in 2014 — is breeding bad news for employers as underemployed class-action lawyers flock to labor law as a new source of profits in 2015.

An aggressively pr0-labor Obama administration and 1930s-era laws that haven’t been adapted to the reality of a mobile, telecommuting work force make for rich targets as private lawyers press wage-and-hour suits that require relatively little up-front preparation and can generate multimillion-dollar settlements. Lawyers seeking back pay for a few hours or even minutes per week, per employee, can make a plausible case for tens of million of dollars in damages with far less of the expert testimony and economic analysis of a more complicated discrimination case.

“If you’re an employer in 2015 and you want to comply with the law and manage litigation risks, you must focus on payroll and wage-and-hour issues,” said Gerald Maatman, a partner in the Chicago office of Seyfarth Shaw, which focuses on representing employers. “You have a migration of plaintiff lawyers into that area, I think, because of low barriers to entry.”

Other trends Maatman and his colleagues at Seyfarth Shaw predict for 2015 in a report released today include:

More lawsuits over misclassification of employees, as private lawyers follow behind the Obama administration’s attempts to pull millions of employees into the orbit of labor laws requiring overtime pay.
More lawsuits in state courts, as attorneys try to attack large employers in friendlier venues using state labor laws, which often make it easier to form class actions.
Court battles over the status of telecommuters — does answering a company e-mail at 10 p.m. trigger the overtime clock?
More suits over independent contractors, and whether they are de facto employees entitled to overtime and benefits.
More lawsuits over pension plans, after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated protections against suits against defined-contribution plan fiduciaries for including company stock among investment choices.
More suits by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as the Obama administration, undeterred by court losses and even sanctions, presses large-scale discrimination cases.
Lots of creative lawyering as plaintiff attorneys develop new tactics to get around Supreme Court rulings upholding the legality of contracts requiring individual arbitration and making it harder to form large classes of workers with often differing claims.

Pro-labor forces lost a big one in December when the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit on behalf of workers at an Amazon.com warehouse who sought back pay for the time they spent waiting in line to be checked for stolen goods after a shift. The decision in Integrity Staffing Solutions vs. Busk upheld the Labor Dept.’s position on this particular issue, which is that wages are only due for “principle activities” of a job. But this decision hardly eliminates the fog of uncertainty surrounding labor laws that were written largely to reduce industrial violence in the 1930s and are poorly adapted to the modern digital work force.

There are no firm guidelines on whether an employee is a manager exempt from federal wage laws or a worker entitled to overtime, for example. Many retailers employ “assistant managers” who oversee workers as well as waiting on customers themselves.

“The line between exempt and non-exempt is not always clear and so a lot of employers are being sued on these misclassification theories,” Maatman said.

Lawyers are also suing over independent contractors under the theory they are paid wages and directed on what to do, just like rank-and-file employees. “You may label me as an IC but labels don’t matter,” is the argument, Maatman said.

Telecommuting and electronic communications are opening up another rich territory for suits, he said. The EEOC won before the Sixth Circuit last year in a case accusing Ford Motor Co. of violating the Americans With Disabilities Act by failing to accommodate an employee by allowing her to telecommute four days a week. “The ‘workplace’ is anywhere that an employee can perform her job duties,” the court said.

But lawyers may use the same reasoning to attack employers for allowing non-exempt workers to use company e-mail or portable electronic devices in off hours.

“You and I check our e-mail at 10 p.m. as the work day goes on around the clock,” he said. That’s opening up a “compliance Rubik’s Cube,” he said, as “a lot of well-intentioned employers are getting sued because they haven’t buttoned up their compliance strategies.”

Lawsuits under the Fair Labor Standards Act are often easier to bring than discrimination cases, he added, because they only require a simple statement of the claims without a lot of front-end work by expensive statisticians and labor economists.

“If you view class actions like investments in the stock market, it’s a lower investment, and a lower-risk investment of time and effort by plaintiff lawyers,” he said.

Lawyers do have to get employees to opt-in — a major reform Congress added to labor law in the 1950s, which should be applied to all class actions — but Maatman said they generally get 25-40% of employees to sign up for lawsuits, creating a potent enough threat if a judge will certify the class. (Lawyers had much higher levels of cooperation when they sued on behalf of federal employees seeking back pay for working during the 2013 shutdown, naturally.) And last year they won class certification 72% of the time, according to Seyfarth’s analysis, increasing the odds of a profitable settlement.

Employers have a few more weapons at their disposal, thanks to a trio of Supreme Court rulings in recent years making it harder to assemble large groups of employees into a single class action (Wal-Mart vs. Dukes), and enforce contracts requiring individual arbitration (AT&T vs. Concepcion), and American Express vs. Italian Colors). They also won a quiet victory in December with Dart Cherokee Basin Operating Co., LLC v. Owens, making it easier to remove cases to federal court.

By the end of the year Concepcion and Amex had been sited in more than 300 rulings on labor law. But the NLRB refuses to accept the trend, challenging class waivers even after losing on that issue before the Fifth Circuit in a 2013 decision, D.R. Horton vs. NLRB. And plaintiff lawyers have turned the strategy against employers by admitting defeat when they lose on class certification and filing hundreds of individual claims in arbitration. As Seyfarth lawyers say in their report:

The plaintiffs’ lawyers’ mantra seems to have been that they will give employers the arbitrations and decertification they desire, followed by the scourge of numerous individual actions (and the concomitant pressure to settle due to the cost of defense).

Employers also can expect to face more ERISA lawsuits, which Seyfarth estimates generated $1.3 billion in settlements last year. ERISA suits got a boost last June when the Supreme Court in Fifth Third vs. Dudenhoeffereliminated any presumption in favor of protecting fiduciaries who allow company stock as a choice in defined-contribution plans. While SCOTUS offered some comforting language including reassurance that company officials can’t be forced to disclose insider information to ERISA investors, the general effect will be to increase lawsuits over retirement plans, Maatman said.

The Supreme Court also appears poised to eliminate a judge-made presumption that union-negotiated pension benefits are vested for life. In M&G Polymers USA, LLC v. Tackett, argued in November, the court is likely to return to ordinary contract law understanding of this issue, meaning employers will have an easier time winning benefits disputes, but opening them to more litigation over collective bargaining agreements.

The EEOC also is expected to continue focusing on large-scale systemic discrimination cases instead of individual cases. The agency won $294 million in recoveries last year, although it settled only 136 lawsuits for $22.5 million in 2014, down from 209 cases and $39 million in 2013 and the lowest amount in 17 years.

The EEOC filed 133 lawsuits last year, up from 131 in 2013, but it also suffered an unprecedented level of criticism over its enforcement of anti-discrimination laws, including the Fourth Circuit’s upholding of $200,000 in sanctions for taking too long to prosecute a case alleging anti-Hispanic discrimination.

Undeterred, the Obama administration is doubling down on aggressive enforcement of its labor agenda. The National Labor Relations Board is pursuing union representation for college athletes, collective bargaining rights for even small subgroups of large employers, and in a move that could upend decades of settled franchise law, it wants to declare franchisors like McDonald’s “joint employers” liable for labor-law violations by independently owned franchise stores. Combined with a pair of rulings granting union organizers access to company e-mail systems and allowing hurry-up elections that one lawyer described as a “Christmas gift” to organized labor, employers will be spending a lot more this year on efforts to keep their workplaces union-free.

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