When most people consider workers' compensation, they may think primarily of benefits that cover lost wages and medical expenses. While these are undoubtedly important, they are not the whole story. Workers' compensation also includes a variety of other benefits, often less discussed, that provide much-needed support in different aspects of recovery and daily life. In this article, we will explore seven such benefits.
When a work-related injury or illness leaves you unable to perform your pre-injury job, vocational rehabilitation benefits step in to provide a crucial bridge back to gainful employment. These benefits are designed to empower you with the tools, resources, and support needed to identify and pursue a suitable career path that aligns with your new physical capabilities and skills. While specific eligibility criteria can vary by jurisdiction, generally speaking, you may be entitled to vocational rehabilitation benefits if: a) you have suffered a work-related injury or illness that results in a permanent disability; b) your disability prevents you from returning to your pre-injury job; and c) a qualified rehabilitation counselor or other authorized professional determines that vocational rehabilitation services are likely to enable you to return to suitable employment.
Vocational rehabilitation is not a one-size-fits-all approach, rather it encompasses a wide range of services tailored to your individual needs and circumstances, which might include:
It should be noted that while vocational rehabilitation primarily aims to restore your earning capacity, it often includes provisions for income support during the rehabilitation process. Many jurisdictions offer vocational rehabilitation maintenance allowances, which are payments designed to cover basic living expenses while you actively participate in an approved rehabilitation program. These allowances are specific to vocational rehabilitation and differ from other types of workers' compensation benefits. Additionally, other forms of workers' compensation benefits, such as temporary total disability (TTD) or temporary partial disability (TPD) benefits, may also be available to help offset your lost income while you are participating in rehabilitation, depending on your specific circumstances and jurisdiction.
When a work-related injury or illness results in permanent physical limitations, adapting your living space and transportation becomes essential for maintaining independence, safety, and quality of life. Home and vehicle modification benefits recognize this need and provide financial assistance to make necessary changes to your home and vehicle, to ensure they are accessible and safe for your specific needs.
To be eligible for home and vehicle modification benefits, you generally must have: suffered a work-related injury or illness that results in a permanent disability; the disability necessitates modifications to your home or vehicle to accommodate your needs; and a qualified medical professional or rehabilitation specialist recommends the modifications. While the specific modifications covered can vary depending on your individual needs and the state's workers' compensation laws, common examples include:
Home Modifications:
Vehicle Modifications:
If a work-related injury leads to permanent loss of (or loss of use of) a specific body part, specific loss benefits step in to provide a form of financial compensation. These benefits are distinct from other types of workers' compensation benefits, such as temporary disability or permanent partial disability (PPD) benefits, as they are not tied to your ability to work or earn wages. Instead, they focus solely on the physical loss itself and the impact it has on your overall quality of life.
The calculation of specific loss benefits is usually based on, and calculated in accordance with, predetermined schedules established by each state that designate the number of weeks of compensation allocated to each type of injury or impairment, with the compensation rate usually being a percentage of your average weekly wage (AWW) at the time of the injury, subject to minimum and maximum limits set by the state. For example, the loss of an arm might be compensated for a specific number of weeks, while the loss of a finger might be compensated for a different number of weeks. The specific number of weeks assigned to each injury varies by state and the severity of the impairment.
In the tragic event of a work-related fatality, death benefits serve as a safety net for the surviving dependents of the deceased worker and are meant to alleviate the immediate and long-term financial burdens placed on dependents who relied on their income. Death benefits encompass a range of financial assistance programs designed to address the various needs of surviving dependents:
When a work-related injury or illness leaves you unable to fulfill your role as a caregiver, dependent care benefits are provided to ensure that your dependents continue to receive the care and support they need during recovery. To qualify for dependent care benefits, you must be significantly incapacitated or disabled due to your work-related injury or illness, rendering you unable to provide the necessary care for your dependents. Furthermore, the dependents themselves must be qualifying/eligible. Qualifying dependents usually include minor children, adult children with disabilities who require ongoing care and supervision, and, in many states, elderly parents might be eligible if you were their primary caregiver and they are unable to care for themselves. Furthermore, in some states, family members other than your parents or children may also be eligible so long as they were financially or physically dependent on you at the time of your injury.
Dependent care benefits are generally provided for as long as your work-related injury or illness prevents them from fulfilling your caregiving role. This could extend throughout the recovery period or even indefinitely if the disability is permanent.
Assistive devices and equipment benefits provide financial assistance for obtaining and maintaining various tools designed to help injured workers perform daily activities, manage their condition, or return to work. These may include:
Note that these benefits often cover not only the initial purchase of the device or equipment but also its maintenance, repair, and replacement when necessary.
Transportation assistance benefits help injured workers access necessary medical care or participate in approved rehabilitation programs, and can include:
Being fired can be a devastating event. The sudden loss of income, benefits and security can trigger a cascade of issues in an employee’s personal and professional life. What can be even more devastating is when the termination occurs for reasons that were considered protected by law.
Wrongful termination can be hard to recognize and harder to demonstrate, but it is possible to prove to a court that an employee has been terminated when they should not have been or in a way that violated their rights. Whether it’s a breached contract, discrimination, or retaliation, this article explores the ways that a termination can be wrongful and, more importantly, what an employee can do about it.
Wrongful termination can be difficult to recognize. The default assumption in most places in America is that employees are employed at-will. Under at-will employment, a worker can be terminated for virtually any reason or without any given reason.
However, even under an at-will employment system, it is possible that a termination can become wrongful. If a termination violates an employment contract, serves as retaliation against whistleblowers, is motivated by discrimination, breaks up unions, or is actually a constructive discharge, then the termination might actually be wrongful.
An employment contract is one of the only explicit contradictions to a claim of at-will employment. One of the key sections of an employment contract is the section on termination of the working relationship. This section will enumerate any of the conditions under which the employment contract may be terminated before its written conclusion. If an employee is fired for a reason that is not described in the contract, then the employer may be found to have wrongfully terminated the employee.
If an employer is discriminatory in their firings, that termination is very likely wrongful. Discriminatory firings could be explicit, such as firing all employees of a specific national origin, or it could be implicit, like firing employees for violating uniform policies by wearing garments or hairstyles mandated by their religion.
An at-will termination can also stray into trouble if it violates certain federal or state laws. The most common laws that may be violated by employers are laws protecting the formation of unions and the existence of whistleblowers.
A whistleblower is any individual who reports a workplace violation of state or federal laws. A whistleblower may make a report of discrimination, harassment, or a violation of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) safety regulations. Federal law protects an employee’s right to report these misdeeds and if an employee is terminated after they have reported their employer’s unsafe or illegal activities, that will likely be found to be a wrongful termination.
Similarly, employees have a right to unionize. This means that employers are not allowed to threaten, coerce, retaliate against, or fire workers for discussing the possibility of forming or joining a union. If an employee is fired for unionizing, that could be a violation of union protections and qualify as a wrongful termination.
Sometimes even if an employee quits it could be considered a wrongful termination. This is known as constructive discharge. Constructive discharge occurs whenever an employer intentionally creates working conditions that are so hostile that an employee is forced to quit rather than continue to endure the inhuman conditions. Factors that may indicate that an employee quitting was actually a constructive discharge may include forcing a worker to work a dangerous job without functioning safety equipment, forcing the worker to work excessive hours or long shifts with no breaks, reassigning an employee to perform the most laborious or difficult tasks without assistance, or any other circumstance in which a reasonable person would feel that the only possible solution would be to quit rather than endure the continued abuses of their employer.
Once it has been recognized, employees should seek to rectify their wrongful termination. While AAL does have a guide addressing what to do about a wrongful termination, some examples of actions that can be taken are discussed below.
First, employees should gather and keep any and all evidence that can be found that they were wrongfully terminated. From email threads to violations of employment contracts to witness accounts, whatever proof can be assembled that demonstrates the illegal actions taken by the former employer can seriously bolster a wrongful termination case.
Once all available evidence has been gathered, the appropriate authority should be contacted. If the issue is one of retaliation for reporting safety violations, OSHA should be contacted. If the termination was suspected to be discriminatorily based on the employee’s age, color, disability status, genetic information, national origin, race, religion, or sex, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) should be contacted.
Filing these reports allows the authorities to investigate the situation with their full power and authority. If the issue can be solved here, the employee may be reinstated with the potential to gain back pay for the time they were unemployed. If OSHA or the EEOC are unable resolve the issue, there is more that a wrongfully terminated employee can do.
If you have been wrongfully terminated from your position, whether through traditional firing or constructive discharge, you may be able to file a lawsuit in order to seek justice for the losses that you have suffered. By demonstrating the ways in which you have been terminated in violation of your rights, you may be able to receive compensation for your injuries. The best way to prevail in your lawsuit is with an Employment Law attorney.
An experienced Employment Law attorney can zealously advocate on your behalf in order to get you the best possible outcome for your case. Using their legal expertise, trial tactics, and expert witnesses, your Employment Law attorney will be able to gather evidence of your mistreatments such as email records and witness testimony and present that information in the most compelling way for your case.
Don’t wait, contact AAL today and begin your journey to justice.
Workplace safety is an issue that many employees may take for granted. Working in an office building may seem like a tame and safe affair that doesn’t feature too many obvious safety hazards. Similarly, a kitchen may regularly discount or bend certain safety rules for the sake of greater day-to-day convenience. Unfortunately, many of these situations are only realized for the dangers they are when workers fleeing some accident discover that their fire doors trap them inside or their emergency exits are blocked by pallets.
In order to ensure that these grim situations occur as infrequently as possible and workers are protected on the job, the U.S. Department of Labor uses the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to create and maintain safety standards for workplaces nationwide. Far from being a niche organization that only certifies construction sites and industrial factories, OSHA operates in workplaces from steel mills to commercial offices.
OSHA was created as a formal organization in 1970 with the enactment of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970. The stated purpose of OSHA is “to ensure safe and healthful working conditions for workers” by creating and enforcing safety standards, providing training services, establishing outreach programs, and offering assistance to U.S. businesses.
The Act that created OSHA also gives the organization jurisdiction in most workplaces. In addition to being able to make inspections and issue consequences in all 50 states, OSHA also has jurisdiction over workplaces in American Samoa, Guam, The Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, The U.S. Virgin Islands, Wake Island, and Washington D.C. Certain supplemental laws like the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act also grants OSHA jurisdiction in places like oil rigs or offshore fishing vessels.
Some of OSHA’s regulations are structural, determining how foundational structures like ramps, stairs, or cargo elevators must be constructed. Other safety standards target personnel by requiring certain protective equipment such as rubber gloves or hard hats in certain workspaces. OSHA can dictate where emergency exits are placed, how many are needed, and how the area around these exits must be maintained.
Since OSHA is responsible for overseeing more than 7 million workplaces, the agency has to prioritize which areas they investigate and in what order. In general, OSHA follows a six-tiered priority list. From highest to lowest OSHA’s priorities are:
If OSHA does find a violation, the organization can assess fines on a per-violation basis. Companies that have repeatedly been fined for the same safety violations will be fined increasing amounts, quickly jumping to tenfold the initial fine per repeat violation. In extreme cases where a workplace poses an imminent danger to workers, OSHA may ask the courts to intervene and stop work at an unsafe jobsite until safe conditions for the workers are restored.
In addition to conducting inspections and fining companies, OSHA is also tasked with protecting the rights of workers. OSHA enforces a worker’s right to:
The most important right that OSHA protects is a worker’s right to request an inspection from the organization to review serious hazards or violations that they believe exists in their workplace. Included in this right to report is also the right to be anonymous in their reporting and the right to be protected from retaliatory efforts from the company caused by their reporting. Employees who exercise these rights to report unsafe working conditions are sometimes referred to as whistleblowers.
A whistleblower is any employee who reports their own workplace for violating some law. Not every whistleblower is reporting a violation of OSHA safety regulations, but every employee reporting a violation of OSHA standards can attempt to seek protection under whistleblower laws. Protection for whistleblowers from retaliation includes defense from employers who:
For employees who want to report either initial OSHA violations or subsequent retaliation against a whistleblower, the first step is reaching out to OSHA and filing a complaint. From that point, an Administrative Law Judge will be appointed to manage the case and the process will move forward very similarly to a lawsuit.
Once the case reaches the hearing stage, the whistleblower will have the opportunity to testify about their observations and submit any relevant evidence to support their claims. Once the evidence has been submitted and both sides have made their points, a verdict will be rendered in favor of either the company or the whistleblower.
If you have been unable to report unsafe working conditions, whether due to intimidation by an employer or because the information about how to report was not provided to you, you may be able to file a lawsuit in order to seek justice for the losses that you have suffered. By demonstrating the ways in which you have been threatened with or are actively suffering from retaliation, you may be able to receive compensation for your injuries. The best way to prevail in your lawsuit is with an Employment Law attorney.
An experienced Employment Law attorney can zealously advocate on your behalf in order to get you the best possible outcome for your case. Using their legal expertise, trial tactics, and expert witnesses, your Employment Law attorney will be able to gather evidence of your mistreatments such as email records and witness testimony and present that information in the most compelling way for your case.
Don’t wait, contact AAL today and begin your journey to justice.
The first drug testing policies as they are known today were instituted in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the infamous “War on Drugs.” 40 years later, the landscape of what qualifies as an illegal drug has shifted and with it, employee expectations for what is and is not an acceptable drug test result.
As an example, many states have legalized marijuana for either recreational or medical use by their populations. Employees in these states would then expect that a positive result for marijuana’s active component, THC, would not be disqualifying on a drug test. However, as this article discusses, the topic of drug tests and their administration in the modern workforce is a complicated and nuanced subject. To get to the heart of the question “are drug tests illegal?” the answer is: sometimes.
Drug testing is a broad process that can have many variances. The catch-all definition of a drug test is a process that identifies signs of controlled substances in a biological sample given or taken from an individual. Drug testing is generally used by employers, prosecutors, rehab programs, professional athletic programs, or medical monitoring systems.
The biological sample can vary widely depending on the testing company and the substances being tested for. The most common biological sample analyzed for substances is urine. Other biological sample types exist and include blood, hair, saliva, and sweat. The process for analyzing these samples is generally similar, the sample is tested using a chemical process like chromatography to determine whether the active components of the targeted substances are present in the sample.
The term drug test is actually an oversimplification of what a drug test can actually find. A drug test can find a number of controlled substances including:
Certain substances are easier to detect than others. For example, THC from marijuana can linger in detectable amounts for up to a month. By comparison, detectable signs of alcohol can vanish in hours and heroin usage can be undetectable as soon as two days later. How fast a substance can become undetectable depends on a number of factors including the dose used, the user’s ability to metabolize the substance, and how long the substance has been used by the individual.
If a target substance is detected, the drug test will return a positive result. If a drug test is unable to detect the markers for the target substances, then it will return a negative result. In no case is the test able to discern when the user was using the substance.
One challenge for many potential employees facing a drug test surrounds marijuana use. The laws regulating marijuana in the United States are fractious and varied. The majority of states have laws that allow for marijuana to be used in a medical capacity and about 20% of states have laws that allow marijuana to be bought, sold, and used recreationally.
Despite the variety of state laws regarding marijuana use, there are some instances where a drug test that returns positive for marijuana will result in an employee losing their job or an applicant being denied employment. Most of those instances involve the federal government. Because there are no laws that acknowledge marijuana usage for any reason, medical or otherwise, federal jobs all prohibit marijuana usage.
Not only that, but any company subject to the rules of the Federal Department of Transportation are also subject to the federal ban on marijuana usage. Additionally, any private company that has government contracts stipulating that a drug free workplace must be maintained will also be required to turn away employees who test positive for marijuana.
In addition to federal positions, some private companies may have positions that prohibit marijuana use. These positions usually include the usage of vehicles or heavy machinery. Unfortunately, this can impact disabled workers more harshly than able-bodied workers.
For example, if an employee used THC products in order to manage the chronic pain associated with fibromyalgia, they would turn up positive for a drug test looking for marijuana use. Traditionally, if an employer refuses to hire an individual with a disability due to how they manage their condition, this would infringe on the employee’s rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Since the ADA is a federal law, however, it will not protect any disabled persons using marijuana.
When it comes to legal marijuana states, protections vary wildly for employees. Some workers are allowed to use a medical recommendation to protect themselves from being rejected by a positive marijuana test, others cannot. Connecticut, for example, has a law that states that a “qualifying patient” may not be subject to discharge, penalty, or threat from their employer. These laws will usually have carve-outs for being impaired by marijuana while on the job site, but otherwise, these state protections are the most solid defense against being denied the opportunity due to a positive marijuana test.
Some states who offer protections for marijuana users even have reasonable accommodation clauses that offer similar protections to those found in the ADA with the explicit inclusion of marijuana users.
One instance where a drug test is always illegal is if it is done discriminatorily. If an employer subjects people of a certain race, color, sex, national origin, or other protected class to a drug test then it is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and illegal. Discriminatory behavior, including selective use of drug testing should be reported to the Department of Labor’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
If you have been subjected to discriminatory drug testing in the workplace or were denied a job for drug use that was legal, you may be able to file a lawsuit in order to seek justice for the losses that you have suffered. By demonstrating the ways in which you have suffered discrimination or been unfairly dismissed, you may be able to receive compensation for your injuries. The best way to prevail in your lawsuit is with an Employment Law attorney.
An experienced Employment Law attorney can zealously advocate on your behalf in order to get you the best possible outcome for your case. Using their legal expertise, trial tactics, and expert witnesses, your Employment Law attorney will be able to gather evidence of your mistreatments such as email records and witness testimony and present that information in the most compelling way for your case.
Don’t wait, contact AAL today and begin your journey to justice.
An unfortunate trend in recent years has been the rise of reports of discrimination across the nation. Due to the amount of time Americans spend working, much of this discrimination is experienced on the job. Sometimes discrimination can be so ingrained in the culture of a workplace that it is difficult to even recognize it for what it is.
As workplaces across the nation work to become more inclusive and more employees feel empowered to speak up about mistreatment, it is in everyone’s best interest to learn more about discrimination. In this article, the discussion will focus on racial, sexual, and religious discrimination: what they are, how to recognize them in the workplace, and what can be done to preempt them before they become a problem.
By definition, discrimination is any difference in treatment or consideration based on a class or category. However, there is a distinct difference between legal and illegal discrimination. An employer can legally be discriminatory in their treatment of the financial department as opposed to the retail team. This difference in treatment may be shown in the relative pay rates of the employees in those categories or the benefits offered.
Illegal discrimination, on the other hand, is discriminatory behavior against a class or category of people that is protected by law. There are several federal laws that prevent discrimination. Most prominently, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In total, there are eight types of discrimination that are forbidden by federal law:
Notably, the victim of discrimination does not always have to be the chosen victim of the perpetrator. Anyone who feels that discriminatory or harassing behavior is causing them to be unable to function in the company normally may be able to file a complaint about the behavior.
Illegal discrimination complaints are heard, investigated, and resolved by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This commission is a part of the U.S. Department of Labor and exists to address issues of discrimination in the workplace. If an EEOC investigator finds evidence of discrimination, then the EEOC can offer mediation services or even take direct legal action against the employer.
Sexual discrimination is a differing treatment based on the sex of an employee. This term is intentionally broad and has been expanded in its interpretation to include discrimination against pregnant people, people of different gender identities, and people of diverse sexual orientations.
One of the most common types of sex-based discrimination is sexual harassment. Harassment is a type of discriminatory behavior that can involve pranks, critical comments, offensive actions, assault, or other unwanted actions that cause worry, fear, or annoyance. The standard for determining whether someone has engaged in harassing behavior is often the hostile work environment standard.
The hostile work environment standard attempts to determine whether the allegedly harassing behavior has given rise to a setting in which the victim can no longer work or effectively accomplish their duties. Typically to create a hostile work environment the harassing behavior must either be pervasive or severe.
Pervasive behavior is any action that is repeated to cause consistent small harms that damage the employee’s ability to feel safe to perform their duties in the workplace. Examples of pervasive sexual harassment include consistent offensive jokes based on the victim’s sex, engaging in pranks such as hiding the tools or equipment of employees of a certain sex, or actions such as repeatedly invading the space of an employee or touching them in inappropriate manners.
In contrast to pervasive harassment’s standard of numerous consistent offenses, severe harassing behavior may only need to happen once. Severe harassment is any single, impactful or traumatic event that deeply impacts the employee’s sense of safety. Examples of severe harassment may include physical assault, destruction of the employee’s personal possessions, or other actions that would be objectively harmful.
While sex-based discrimination is highly pervasive in workplaces, it can be curbed. Sexual discrimination can be deterred by implementing zero-tolerance policies, ensuring that the internal HR department has the power and incentives to root out sex-based discrimination, and by individual employees speaking out about discriminatory or harassing actions.
Racial discrimination is any unequal treatment that is based on the race of an employee. Notably, the person discriminating against an individual is still guilty of discriminatory actions even if they incorrectly assume the victim’s race. For example, if an employer singles an employee out and discriminates against an employee because they are black, it does not matter if the employee is actually Asian or Hispanic.
Racial discrimination often crosses over with two other categories of discrimination: color discrimination, more commonly referred to as colorism, and national origin discrimination. Color-based discrimination does not discern between specific races but instead discriminates based on skin tone. National origin discrimination specifically targets the nation that the harasser believes the employee to be from.
Sometimes certain policies can be racially discriminatory in less obvious ways than harassment or outright abuse. For example, certain uniform policies regarding beards or hair can disproportionately affect people of certain races or from certain national origins. If a policy seems innocuous, but strongly affects a certain race or only benefits people of certain national origins, that policy can still be found to be discriminatory.
When it comes to preventing racial discrimination it usually requires a twofold approach: a policy angle and a personnel angle. From a policy angle, companies should be open to feedback from employees about ways that some policies are unfair or prejudicial and change them. This is particularly true if the people complaining about those policies are part of a group that is underrepresented among the higher branches of the company. From a personal point, employees can speak out against people using discriminatory language or acting discriminatorily toward members of certain races.
Religious discrimination is a historical struggle in America. Many of the first Europeans who came to America cited religious persecution as why they fled. In the modern-day, shifting sociopolitical factors have caused many religious groups to feel unheard, underrepresented, and discriminated against.
Religious discrimination can be obvious or very complex. Obvious examples include not allowing employees to wear religious garbs such as yarmulkes, turbans, or hijabs or not hiring employees who do not adhere to the employer’s faith.
Less obvious examples are usually based on employment policies that benefit certain religions while discounting all others. For example, an employer may incentivize or compel employees to adhere to their religion if the employer asks what religious institution an individual attends, leads employees in regular prayer, or includes whether a person is a practicing member of the employer’s faith in decisions regarding hiring, promotions, or wage increases.
Sometimes even something like asking to learn more about an employee’s faith can become harassment. For example, asking a few questions about an employee’s holy days, rituals, or other beliefs may be considered innocuous. However, if those questions begin to move towards interrogating the employee’s beliefs or implying that their religion is morally incorrect or fake, then those questions may be considered harassing.
In general, the best way to prevent religious discrimination is to act tolerantly. This means allowing religious grab to be worn, respecting an employee’s holy days of obligation, and not asking questions if it is apparent or expressed that the employee is no longer comfortable with that line of questioning.
If you have experienced discrimination in the workplace, you may be able to file a lawsuit in order to seek justice for the losses that you have suffered. By demonstrating the ways in which you have suffered harassment and endured a hostile work environment, you may be able to receive compensation for your injuries. The best way to prevail in your lawsuit is with an Employment Law attorney.
An experienced Employment Law attorney can zealously advocate on your behalf in order to get you the best possible outcome for your case. Using their legal expertise, trial tactics, and expert witnesses, your Employment Law attorney will be able to gather evidence of your mistreatments such as email records and witness testimony and present that information in the most compelling way for your case.
Don’t wait, contact AAL today and begin your journey to justice.
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the labor market to rapidly react to contagion control protocols. For many people, those protocols meant that their work was now being performed at home. This change in setting has begun a broader discussion about working from home, also known as telecommuting.
The sudden shift of millions of workers to working from home has continued to affect people since March 2020. Many employers are now weighing the benefits of using remote workers and entire offices have been depopulated as workers now complete their tasks in the comfort of their own homes.
Now, after telecommuting has gone from a necessity for the continuation of businesses to a potential future of work, many workers are beginning to question what impact working from home has on them. What are the benefits of continuing to work from home? How does working from home affect things like taxes? In this article, a few of the most common concerns about working from home are explored in more detail.
Working from home, or telecommuting is not a new phenomenon. As far back as the 1970s, improvements in telecommunication technology allowed some workers to do their duties from home. In general, telecommuting refers to the practice of performing the duties of a job at home. This is usually done from a home computer that may or may not be provided by the company as well as phones or other, more specialized devices.
Some employees have been permitted to work from home as part of the necessary accommodations that they are entitled to under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Under the ADA, an employer must grant the employee reasonable accommodations that allow them to perform their duties despite their disability status.
Once the initial hurdle of receiving or installing the necessary equipment and software to perform their duties from home is cleared, there are a number of benefits that employees can enjoy from telecommuting. Working from home allows employees to save money on travel expenses such as car maintenance and gas by eliminating the commute to a physical office. Additionally, working from home allows employees to create a comfortable work environment for themselves and take advantage of their proximity to their home to handle small tasks such as laundry while on break. These small advantages can greatly improve the morale of employees and make them more engaged in their work.
Unfortunately, working from home does include some of the disadvantages of its in-person opposite. While it manifests in different forms virtually, workers still experience sexual harassment and discrimination while working from home. Additionally, a unique challenge of working from home is that some employees may feel a sense of loneliness or isolation if they are left alone to work without regular meetings or check-ins.
One of the big challenges that arise from working from home is the question of taxation. In general, there are two questions that employees face regarding taxation: what taxes do they owe if they work in a different state than their employer and how can they make deductions for work from home expenses?
Calculating taxes when the employee lives in a different state from the employer can be complex. In general, an employee is responsible for both the income taxes in their home state and the income taxes of their employer’s state. Sometimes states will have reciprocal tax agreements with certain other states.
A reciprocal tax agreement is an arrangement where an employee will only have to pay state income taxes for the state they live in. For example, Illinois allows employees who work in the state but live in Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, and Wisconsin to be exempt from Illinois income tax.
The other major question of taxation arises from whether employees will be able to get a federal deduction for working from home. One idea that some employees may have is that they can deduct the cost of their home office or other expenses from working at home like equipment costs on their taxes.
While there is a $5/sq. ft deduction up to a maximum of 300 sq. ft for home offices, there are some high bars for qualifying. The most disqualifying part of these requirements is that, according to the IRS, “Employees are not eligible to claim the home office deduction.” Further dashing hopes of tax breaks, a 2017 reform of the tax code eliminated miscellaneous itemized deductions for employees working from home. This means that in general, working from home will not result in significant tax savings.
When it comes to employee management from home, many of the same rules that apply to in-person employees are maintained. Anti-harassment and discrimination laws like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 continue to protect workers from offensive and unprofessional behavior.
An employer may have special provisions in their technology use policies for at-home workers. This may include dictating what software is installed on a device used for company business or installing monitoring software on that device. Calculating hours may also be more complex as employees may have to manually fill out timecards or rely on programs to record how many “active” hours an employee works.
Regardless of how work hours are calculated, employees who work from home are still entitled to overtime compensation if they work more than 40 hours in a single workweek. Employers should also make sure that employees who have problems have ready access to human resources in order to resolve the issue, especially in a work-from-home environment.
If you have experienced a violation of your rights while working from home, you may be able to file a lawsuit in order to seek justice for the losses that you have suffered. By demonstrating the ways in which you were wronged by your employer, you may be able to receive compensation for your injuries. The best way to prevail in your lawsuit is with an Employment Law attorney.
An experienced Employment Law attorney can zealously advocate on your behalf in order to get you the best possible outcome for your case. Using their legal expertise, trial tactics, and expert witnesses, your Employment Law attorney will be able to gather evidence of your mistreatment and present that information in the most compelling way for your case.
Don’t wait, contact AAL today and begin your journey to justice.
One of the standard procedures of the modern hiring process, a background check is a process that can be unequally nerve-wracking depending on the person submitting to it. While they are a routine procedure, background checks are neither infallible nor unerring.
While the companies that sell background checking services may pitch themselves as the only way to truly know if a potential candidate is who they say they are, there are a number of logistical, technical, and legal circumstances that can lead to background checks being incorrect, outdated, or even illegal.
A background check, as the name implies, is a procedure that investigates the history of a potential employee. While background checks are routine in most jobs, some jobs require a background check such as those that involve children or law enforcement.
There are a number of topics that a background check can cover. Some examples include:
This is accomplished by verifying the candidate's social security number. Because so many services and processes use an individual’s social security number, it serves as a paper trail of what the individual has done and where they have been. The most common background checks are on a candidate’s criminal or credit history.
Criminal background checks are intended to reveal whether an individual’s name comes up in a criminal database, whether locally or internationally, as well as sex offender registries or civil court records. A criminal background check may include only guilty convictions, or it may include even having been arrested depending on the area and the service used.
Credit background checks will analyze information from credit reporting companies, bankruptcy courts, and other financial institutions. This may reveal the credit score of an applicant, whether they own property, or whether they have ever declared bankruptcy. Some companies may be interested in this information if the job deals with managing client finances.
With so much weight being placed on background checks, it’s natural to ask whether this process is accurate. The unfortunate truth is, not always. There are a number of ways that background checks can be inaccurate that range from errors on the part of the employer to critical failures of the background checking company itself.
One of the simplest errors is entering the wrong social security number. An error of a single keystroke will return information that has nothing to do with the candidate and therefore will result in the check being completely false. However, even if the correct social security number is entered, there are other issues that can arise.
Sometimes the sources of the information are incorrect. There have been hundreds of reports of credit reports returning with incorrect information. Debts that have been paid off or that were not incurred by the candidate but instead by someone else with a similar name. Since these databases are maintained by people, simple human error can have drastic consequences.
Similarly, criminal background checks can return information that is inaccurate. Reports have surfaced of candidates having criminal records of someone else linked to their social security number, to say nothing of the inaccuracies that arise from the aftermath of identity theft.
While these errors can take seconds to commit, they can cause problems for years without the candidate’s knowledge unless they regularly check their own background for errors. Even if an error is discovered, it can take years of arduous work to remove an error from an individual’s criminal or financial records.
In most circumstances, background checks are legal within certain limits. First and foremost, a background check can only be conducted after an employer gains written consent from the applicant. While the applicant does not have to give permission for a background check, the employer is allowed to refuse to hire the applicant based on that refusal.
While an applicant may not be able to refuse a background check, depending on the state that they live in, they may be afforded some protections about what can and cannot be revealed about them. Some states limit the scope of background checks depending on the industry is applied.
Sometimes only certain types of records are accessible. Education records are generally obtainable in all cases while medical and military service records are almost always sealed. Other records, like worker’s compensation and bankruptcy records, aren’t inaccessible but it is unlawful in most cases to use these records to make an employment decision. Criminal records are a varied and complex subject for background checks.
Some states may allow arrest records to be shown on a criminal background check while other states believe that since they are not convictions they are too prejudicial. Additionally, even if a candidate has been found guilty of a crime there may be a limit on the length of time that it can show up on a background check. Nine states have a seven-year limit for a guilty conviction. Those states are:
In some cases, this restriction is eased depending on the salary of the position. If a background checking company brings up a conviction that is meant to be sealed, that may be illegal and the company may be liable for the candidate’s loss of opportunity.
Finally, it is always illegal to conduct a background check for discriminatory reasons. For example, an employer is not allowed to decide who to subject to a financial background check based on their national origin or who to subject to a criminal background check based on their religion. If an employer administers background checks discriminatorily, then they may be reported to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
While a background check can provide a large quantity of information from a number of sources, employers are not limited to just the confines of background checking companies. In the digital age, there are a number of ways that employers can find information about candidates.
One easy source of information about a candidate is social media. By searching an employee’s social media accounts employers can access a wide variety of information about the employee’s habits, beliefs, and expenditures.
Employers can also access public information such as court records, driving records, property ownership records, state licensing records, or sex offender lists on their own without the use of background checking company. Since the information is public, there is not much an applicant can do to suppress this information. However, even if the information is publicly available, if the employer only searches these databases for members of a certain group, that is discriminatory and therefore unlawful.
If you have been subjected to a discriminatory background check, a check that accessed or compelled you to disclose protected information, or that violated your state’s privacy laws, you may be able to file a lawsuit in order to seek justice for the losses that you have suffered. By demonstrating how the background check was illegal, you may be able to receive compensation for your injuries. The best way to prevail in your lawsuit is with an Employment Law attorney.
An experienced Employment Law attorney can zealously advocate on your behalf in order to get you the best possible outcome for your case. Using their legal expertise, trial tactics, and expert witnesses, your Employment Law attorney will be able to gather evidence of your mistreatment and present that information in the most compelling way for your case.
Don’t wait, contact AAL today and begin your journey to justice.
