On October 6th, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation issued a final order approving a 14.5% increase to its workers’ compensation insurance rates. This increase apples to both new and renewed policies effective in Florida as of December 1st, 2016. On the bright side, this is better news than the proposed increase by the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI) of 19.6%. The underlying reason for the majority of this increase is due to a Florida Supreme Court ruling this past April (Castellanos v. Next Door Company) which found the mandatory attorney fee schedule per the Florida Statutes being unconstitutional as a…
Posts published in October 2016
A question that I am frequently asked after a hurricane strikes is “Do I have to pay my employees for times that my business is closed during and after the storm?” The answer is a resounding “maybe”. It all depends upon the classification of employee (and company policy), and we can break it down into two distinct categories; Hourly and Salaried. Let’s look at the hourly employee first. An employee who is paid based on the hours they work would not be entitled to any legally mandated pay for time they are not working. Some states require that if an employee…
It is estimated that 41 million workers do not receive paid sick leave, but that number is going to steadily drop. This past month the President has signed into effect an Executive Order (EO 13706) that establishes paid sick leave for federal contractors. Work performed by parties that contract with the Federal Government will now be required to provide their employees with at least 7 days of paid sick leave on an annual basis. The employee will receive 1 hour of leave for every 30 hours worked, which can be used for: their own illness, injury, or medical condition; the…