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!

As with the state of Oregon, officials in the state of Pennsylvania want specific information about you and your new hires. They want you to report your new hires’ name, social security number, and their address. They request as an option that you can also add in their date of hire, their contact phone number, and their date of birth. As for your information, Pennsylvania labor law requires that you provide your company name, your company address, and your company federal employer identification number.

Employers in Pennsylvania may say that they are already providing their quarterly wage record reports. Isn’t that enough? The problem with quarterly record reports, though, is that they can be weeks, if not months, old. There can also be the problem that that data does not make it directly to the right state officials. In Pennsylvania, it can take up to six months before this quarterly wage reporting makes it to the New Hire reporting division.

On the other hand, with new hire reporting, that information is only days, or a couple weeks ago, so state and federal officials have fresh leads to go on as far as tracking down parents who don’t pay child support is concerned. That allows child support court orders to be written up and enforced on a timely basis.

To participate properly in the new hire reporting process, you can either submit a copy of the actual employee’s W-4 form, which would have their date of hire, name, and contact number. You could also use a standard new hire form, which has spaces on it for exactly the type of information that Pennsylvanian officials are looking. Or you can submit a diskette or a magnetic tape with the information. Or join the 21st century and submit by email or over the Internet.

In Pennsylvania (PA) we have an excellent Department of Human Resources that holds a lot of responsibilities and duties to everyone in this state that includes both the employees and the employers. This department handles all aspects of the employment realm ranging from unemployment benefits to worker’s compensation. They have worked very hard to make this a state that people want to work in and have done many things to make the state even better in regards to working environments.

In our state they have done a lot of great things in recent years. In the past three years Pennsylvania has lowered the unemployment rate from 5.8% to 4.8%. This is a good number to be at since it is exactly that of the national average. As a state we want to be lower, however being equal with national average is quite an accomplishment. In the last three years the department has created over 152,000 new jobs in our state. As well with the assistance of over $2.6 billion dollars in federal funds new work programs have been created or improved work areas that assist in job placement or skills learning in order to master new careers for the unemployed. These have been very beneficial in lowering our unemployment rates as well as to just keep people in the workforce.

Our department of human resources is also responsible for many other aspects of employees and employers in Pennsylvania. One of their primary concerns is that of workplace safety. They are responsible for maintaining a safe work environment or even for ensuring that a place is safe to conduct business in. They are also responsible for the enforcement of all labor laws for Pennsylvania. Primarily they follow up on minor laws in the state regarding children under the age of 18.

I was reading around on some law-talk chat forums recently when I came across a post that got me particularly interested. The post was about the Pennsylvania Public Accommodations Provision. This is not something that most states have within their sets of laws, so I think it’s worth a blog.

Basically, the Public Accommodations Provisions states that a public accommodation is a literal accommodation that is open, accepts or solicits the patronage of the public, which includes the government agencies. Basically, it is any establishment that opens its doors to the public, such as a restaurant, theater or store.

Under the terms of the Act, it is illegal for any owner, lessee, proprietor, manager, superintendent, agent or employee of any public accommodation to discriminate against any person in the full use and enjoyment of the public facility on the basis of the patron’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, known association with a person with a disability, use of a guide or support animal due to blindness, deafness or physical inability because the user is a handler or trainer of such animals.

It is required that this notice is posted in the facility by an owner, lessee, proprietor or manager of the public accommodation. The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission does monitor these posts to ensure that they are enacted and in place in a visible spot within the store. The notice must be placed where they can readily be seen by those seeking or granting any of the accommodations. It is illegal to tamper with or remove these notices of public accommodation.

In the event that a patron feels that he or she has been discriminated against in the public accommodation, the patron must file a complaint within 180 days of the alleged discrimination. The complaint must be filed with the Human Relationships Commission or with the Pennsylvania General Attorney.

The full details of the public accommadation laws are reflected on the Pennsylvania Complete Labor Law poster.