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!

Maine seems to be a good place for employers at the moment, at least according to some of the sources that I have been seeing and hearing from lately. The Governor there, John Baldacci, has the Council on Jobs, Innovation and the Economy doing a study on the job growth situation and the state of the Maine economy. The resulting report, or an interim report actually to be specific, says that the state should fund something called cluster development at the rate of $10 million a year, with that money being open to all industries and employers.

The plan has already been partly put in place by the governor for some employers and some industries. For instance, the governor gave a $15 million so called Wired Grant to the state boating industry in order to help that industry and its employers grow and diversify.

The Council on Jobs, Innovation and the Economy was actually set up by the governor last year to come up with an action plan on how to get the industries in the state moving toward innovation, and how to develop these cluster development projects that we are talking about. It is all a matter of how the state is to invest its money in the Maine industries and employers, and how that money could help make your company stronger.

The way the state looks to be going forward with this cluster development is to put $3 million aside for it in the budget this first year, and then dedicate another $5 million for it in the following year. As employers, of course, you will not be able to go after that money in a free for all, but if you consider yourself an innovative employer in your industry, and a strong producer of job growth, it cannot hurt to have this development plan in mind when contacting government officials.

Maine only gives its employers seven days after the start of a new hire to report the new employee to their government. Maine then matches up all of the information that employers send to it about new hires with the state’s child support records. Then the state sends its information to the National Directory of New Hires, which can help the government track delinquent child support payments to the adults at fault for them.

When it comes to how the state defines you guys—the employers in Maine—the state’s labor laws follow the same guidelines that the federal tax guidelines do when it comes to defining employers. An employer can also include a government organization or a labor organization too.

If you fit this bill—and if you have employees, chances are you do—you are required to report new hires, according to the Maine labor laws, within seven days of the first day that the new employee works for you for pay.

This includes a person you may have once had on your staff but then laid off or in another case, they took a leave of absence. Once you re-hire that person, the key ingredient in determining if you need to file a new hire report on them is whether or not you need them to file a new W-4 form in their employee file. On the other hand, if the employee never got removed from your payroll records, and never was officially terminated, then you don’t have to fill out a new W-4 form and thus don’t have to report them to the state of Maine as a new hire.

But if you do, you can report in Maine in a number of ways. You can send in their W-4 form, send in your own personnel record by e-mail or diskette or online as long as it contains the necessary information, or follow the instructions set up by the state for their official form.

The Maine (ME) Department of Human Resources is a key group that funds many things within the state. If you live in Maine, work in Maine or you own a business here, then you do have the need to contact and work with the Department of Human Resources. Although most people turn to this department when they are in need of unemployment assistance through insurance or for financial need, they can also turn to it for addition aid as well as information about the state’s well being as well.

Recently, the Maine Department of Human Resources has released information about the unemployment rate within the state. Currently, it is at 4.6 percent which is just below the national level of unemployment at 4.8 percent. In addition, this is down from the 5.4 percent from about a year ago. The drop in unemployment can be attributed to many things but in part is due to the over 10,000 jobs that have been created in the state since the end of 2001.

In addition to this, another reason for the drop in unemployment has been the Maine Department of Human Resource’s ability to provide training and education to those that live in the state. The Job Training and Dislocated Workers Fund has been about to provide the state with 405.5 million dollars in funds for this specific reason. It provides skill training and career development to those that live in our state that need the additional help.

The Maine Department of Human Resources also has other programs, such as that of One Stop Career Centers that also provide education and training as well as support the many needs of those that are unemployed and searching for work. Those of us that live here can tap into this help to find the help that we need when things are not going the way that we thought it should.