Welcome back. So in this video we're talking about pay compliance and some of the key statutes. So what are the key statutes? Well, a lot of this video will look a lot like alphabet soup. Because that's what these statutes go by, they go by these acronyms. But hopefully, by the end of the video, you'll get a good sense about what they cover. And if you are interested, you can go online and look for more information about the details yourself. So first of all, we have the Fair Labor Standards Act or the FLSA. The FLSA covers minimum wage, overtime, child labor, and nondiscrimination. We'll look at the FLSA in greater detail in our next video. The next law we want to talk about is the Family Medical Leave Act or the FMLA. The FMLA requires 12 weeks of unpaid job protected leave for medical emergencies, child birth, and adoption. What the FMLA does not require is any sort of paid leave for this time. And again, the United States is unusual among developed countries in that we don't require employees any sort of a paid or partially paid leave after events such as a child birth or an illness in the family or so on. Although some states in the United States have been considering implement either requiring employers to partially compensate employees for that time they take off for medical emergency. Or also, some states such as California have began taxing employees, so that they can provide some supplementary income in the event of one of the events that are covered by the FMLA. There's also OASDI. OASDI stands for Old-Age, Survivors, and Disabilities Insurance and it protects retirees, widows/widowers, and the disabled. And it's paid for through a payroll tax. And so if you get paid, you might notice on your pay stub a certain line item for OASDI and this is what it goes to. It's also popularly known as security. Next is ERISA. ERISA is the Employee Retirement Income and Security Act. The ERISA sets minimum standards of fiduciary responsibility for 401K and other retirement plans. And we'll go over how these retirement plans work in a later video. But for now, note that ERISA does not require employers to offer 401Ks or any sort of retirement plans. Rather, it says that if you do offer a 401K or another retirement plan, then it sets certain levels, certain minimums for fiduciary responsibility. So for example, you can't take the money that employees have put into their 401k and invest it all in your brother Vinny's auto shop. Because that would be a breach of your fiduciary responsibility because Vinny is not responsible. Next, there's also the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, requires large employers to offer high quality health insurance, or otherwise pay a fine. For small employers, it actually, instead of having kind of a stick approach has the carrot approach. Small employers can get a tax rebate or tax incentive for offering a high quality health insurance. The NLRA, or the National Labor Relations Act, provides protections for a worker's right to collectively bargain. That is if unionized, the employer must bargain in good faith over wages, hours and working conditions. Also, the NLRA prohibits employers from engaging in a concerted activity regarding wages, hours and working conditions. And one of the implications for that means that laws or rules, as an employer, such as pay secrecy rules, are not legal, even if the employees are not unionized. Next, is also equal employment laws such as the Fair Pay Act, the Civil Rights Act, Executive Order 11246, the American Disabilities Act and so on. And so collectively, these equal employment laws prohibit discrimination based on several protected classes. So that has included over the years, prohibits discrimination based on sex, race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, age for those over the age of 40, disability or veteran status. And so we refer to those as protected classes and over the years additional legislation has come out to expand the lists of protected classes. Those are again classes that you're not allowed to discriminate on in terms of employment or pay. They also typically offer exceptions for bona fide occupational qualifications or BFOQs. Those bona fide occupational qualifications are characteristics of the job that are essential or are in those primary job duties. So for example, might have a rule at the employer, they have to lift a certain weight. For example, if you are a warehouse, you need to hire strong workers. Well, that might have a disparate impact on women, if women are less likely to be able to lift that weight. But at the same time, if the employer can show that being able to lift that weight is a bona fide occupational qualification, it's really required for the job. Then that would be, the employer would be likely to do that, that would be protected. So typically when an organizations registers with their state government or local government, they will get a compliance reformation and help from that authority. So typically what you might see is a requirement, a posting requirement for the Fair Labor Standards Act or for the Family Medical Leave Act. So these are just two examples for there. So here at this poster for the Fair Labor Standards Act reminds workers and their employers that the federal minimum wage at that point was $7.25 an hour. And then if we zoom in on, for example, the required posting for the Family Medical Leave Act. Then we would see that the FMLA requires covered employers to provide up to 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave to eligible employees for the certain listed reasons. And so if you have any questions then you can always get more information from the US Department of Labor, the States Departments of Labor, WorldatWork, which is the professional association for compensation professionals, or the Society of Human Resource Management. Thanks, and I'll see you next time when we talk about how the FLSA works.
