labor lawAdivision of labor law center

HR professionals or owners are faced with my conflicting HR questions or situations everyday and how to solve the issues can vary depending on who you ask.  Many business owners or HR professionals often ponder the same question, “Is there an agency or source where I can go to get guidance or assistance on these HR issues?”.  Well now there is a solution!  www.HumanResourceBlog.com is now available for any HR professional to come and share their thoughts, questions, or issues and to openly discuss the situation or issue at hand.  Where else would you be able to go to find a community or center that has professionals sharing your same common problems and also having suggestions for you to possibly consider.  Like they say, two brains is better than one.  In this particular case, it’s two professionals better than one! 

www.HumanResourceBlog.com has a goal to build a community strictly for HR professionals all across the states to be able to post and receive answers from actual professionals in the same situation or have the knowledge to possibly guide you to answer.  State laws vary from state to state.  If your organization operates in multi-states, this is the place for you.  www.HumanResourceBlog.com does not limit the answer to any particular state or topic.  It does not have boundaries and/or limitations in the state the question is deriving from.  If you are seeking an answer to your HR question, www.HumanResourceblog.com will be the solution!

Answers are posted daily from Real HR experts that are emailed the questions instantly.  There is no automation to the postings of answers.  The website is strictly for owners, HR professionals, supervisors  and managers to post their HR related issues, questions, or concerns.  Post your questions today! The web site is not intended for employees to post employee related questions. 

Come join and lets build an HR Community together.

Hope to see you there!

The Governor of Connecticut, Gov. M. Jodi Rell, is encouraging you employers in her state to hire veterans. She launched a program called just that—“Hire a Veteran Week”—in the last week of January to get employers to recognize the importance of taking care of our nation’s veterans in this time of turmoil, but she also made it known that it doesn’t have to be January to follow through with this notion/

As she said during the Hire a Veteran Week, veterans have sacrificed so much to serve in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. There have sacrificed their time with their families, and in some cases, they have sacrificed their body, their mind, and their employment and well being for our country. Plus, the governor adds, many people in the armed services come back with special training and skills that could definitely come in handy for a civilian employer.

Part of the program is that the state of Connecticut is holding “Hire a Hero” fairs, much like your typical job fair except they are especially designed to hire returning veterans. The first such fair was held back in January, and it was a sell out and a major success for the businesses that participated in it. So employers should keep their eyes peeled for similar Hire a Hero job fairs in their neck of the woods in Connecticut coming up in the future.

Such programs will continue, thanks to the assistance of the Connecticut Department of Veteran’s Affairs, the Connecticut Department of Labor and the Connecticut Office of Workforce Competitiveness, which work to help veterans in their job market and to help employers who want to hire veterans. My sources tell me that veterans make up about 12 percent of the work force currently in Connecticut, so this program could have no small impact.

As we know, we all can thank the Federal Welfare Reform Act of 1997 for all of the new hire reporting labor laws out there. The result in Connecticut was that the state legislature passed its own version of the law, which went into effect on October 1, 1998.

This law was recently changed in October 2003 to account for independent contractors as we have seen in other states besides Connecticut, like California. According to the revision of the law, independent contractors are considered “employees” of your company if they earn more than $5000 from you and if they are not registered independently with the Connecticut Department of Labor for unemployment benefits. And as your “employees,” you have to then report these independent contractors as new hires when they start to work for you.

When comes to independent contractors and all new hired employees, they all have to be reported in the state of Connecticut no matter how long you think they will work for you—a lifetime or even just one day. Even if a worker has worked for you in the past—but hasn’t done so in the last 6 months—then you have to report them as new hires to in Connecticut. (Employees who have worked for you before in the past within the last six months, though, do not need to be reported as new hires when you bring them back onboard your organization.)

Meanwhile, students, children, or people just working in your household also need to be reported as new hires. The Connecticut law makes no distinctions between age, employment term or category (part time, full time, temporary), or job type when it comes to reporting them as new hires. The state requires information on all of them in order to comply with the federal directive to help track child support payments.

There are many departments in the government that you and I really do not pay much mind to. But, the Connecticut (CT) Department of Human Resources is a different one. Although you may not contact them daily or you may not even think about them, the Department of Labor of Connecticut is a key department within out government as it provides most of the laws and needs of the work place. Those that have a job or those that employ people are the ones that usually will need to contact this department. Of course, this is in addition to those that need help because they are unemployed.

The Connecticut Department of Human Resources provides a great deal of help to those that have businesses. In relation to business owners, this department is the one that needs to be contacted in fact before your doors can even open. Here, they regulate all types of services provided by various governmental agencies. In addition to providing licensing to businesses, they also work with safety standards in the work place, aid with monitoring labor laws including child labor laws, employee compensation and minimum wage laws. They also take care of aspects concerning human resources from hiring and workmen’s compensation to aid in providing a fair work place to the employee. They help to make and enforce many of these very important laws.

On the other hand, the employee can gain many benefits from this department of the government as well. They can find unemployment information, financial aid and insurance information. That is currently something that is affecting 4.1 percent of the Connecticut’s workforce currently (as of July 2006) anyway. In addition, there are numerous other programs in place to aid such as employment placement and job opening listings. The Connecticut Department of Human Resources is a key aspect to anyone that works or provides employment within this state.