Following the Supreme Court’s split decision last month regarding Arizona’s 2010 immigration law known as S.B. 1070, three principles are clear:
- The federal government’s role in setting immigration policy supersedes the efforts of all states in this area;
- Despite the decision, certain state immigration laws requiring employers to enroll in E-Verify will remain in operation until the federal government says otherwise; and,
- The stage is set for a comprehensive reform of existing immigration law by the federal government sometime in 2013 regardless of who is elected as the country’s next president.
Since the passage of the 2010 Massachusetts Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) reform bill, employers face ongoing changes in their use and access to criminal history information. By enhancing regulations around criminal history checks, the CORI bill aims to create greater employment opportunities for past criminal offenders.
CORI reform affects both regular employers and certain regulated employers, such as schools and long-term care facilities, which are required by law to obtain additional CORI information. Employers that do not abide by new CORI regulations may face steep fines as high as tens of thousands of dollars for each offense.
Below, we’ll review some of the main changes to CORI regulations that employers should be aware of:
Employers everywhere will likely experience some budgetary change to comply, but it’s hard to know exactly what that change will be. At the same time, knowing what may be coming down the pike can only prepare employers more for how to handle the final regulations when they come into effect.
In the past few years, the cost of health care for employees in the U.S. has gone up, while the number of small businesses offering health insurance has been on a slow decline, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as "Obamacare," aims to reduce health-care premiums for both individuals and small businesses by increasing the number of healthy people with insurance.
Still, many parts of the law don't sit well with small-business owners, especially the employer mandate, a requirement that employers with 50 or more workers must offer health-insurance coverage or face fines ranging from $2,000 to $3,000 per employee per year.
For a breakdown of the health-care costs your business will face and insight on the future of healthcare for small-business owners and their employees.
