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The Spencer’s Benefits Reports is a summary of the week's news items posted in the WHAT'S NEW pages of Spencer’s Benefits Reports Online. For questions regarding this email service, contact Customer Service at (800)449-9525.
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The U.S. Master Pension Guide reflects the latest regulations, rulings and cases for qualified retirement plans, surveying the different type of plans from which an employer may choose, and describing the procedures for obtaining plan qualification.
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The health care reform plans so far proposed by presidential candidates Sens. John McCain (Ariz.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) take significantly different approaches to employer-provided health care plans. This is the first of several installments on the major features of the candidates’ proposals and how they would affect employer provided benefits…
The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) has warned in its latest Issue Brief that a recent decrease in the uninsured should not be viewed as an indicator of things to come in 2008…
The Department of Labor has obtained a settlement that restores $14,033 owed to the Airtronics Gage & Machine Company 401(k) Profit-Sharing Plans as restitution for losses resulting from violations of ERISA. The settlement was approved by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, in Chao v. Airtronics (Civil Action No. 1:08-cv-04406)…
In comments submitted on September 8 to the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), the ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) urged the EBSA to delay the effective date of the agency’s proposed regulations regarding the new disclosure requirements for participant directed individual account plans. The EBSA issued proposed regulations last July that are intended to improve the disclosure of investment information and fees to participants in participant directed individual account plans, such as 401(k) plans. The regulations are proposed to be effective for plan years beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2009…
More than three-fourths of workers (77%) said that paid sick days are “very important,” and 86% believed that paid sick days should be required by law, according to a survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago on behalf of the Washington, D.C.-based Public Welfare Foundation (PWF). Respondents rated paid sick days as being as important as the minimum wage, overtime pay, and family and medical leave. At least 80% considered it a basic worker’s right and a basic workplace standard, according to PWF…
The Department of Labor has obtained a default judgment against defunct Technengineering Services, Inc., that requires the company to appoint an independent fiduciary to manage and terminate the firm’s profit-sharing/401(k) plan and distribute $20,599 in assets to eligible participants and beneficiaries. The default judgment was entered by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana in Chao v. Technengineering (Civil Action No. 1:08-cv-0709)…
In 2007, Social Security disability insurance benefits (DIB) totaling nearly $7.8 billion in December were paid to more than 8.1 million individuals, 87% of whom were disabled workers. The average age of a disability benefit recipient was slightly more than age 52, and men represented more than half (53%) of the group. For about one-third of the disabled beneficiaries, the primary reason for disability was mental disorders. The average monthly disability benefit was $1,004…
A female employee may pursue her claim that her termination following in-vitro fertilization (IVF) violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA). This was the ruling of the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Hall v. Nalco Company (No. 06-3684)…
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued a comprehensive question-and-answer guide that addresses how the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) applies to a wide variety of performance and conduct issues in the workplace. The new guide is available on the EEOC’s Web site at http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/performance-conduct.html…
The following interest rates have been announced for use in the operation and administration of qualified pension plans…
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has approved the Thrift Savings Plan Enhancement Act of 2008 (H.R. 6500), which would amend Title 5 of the United States Code to provide for the automatic enrollment of new participants in the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) for federal employees. Rep. Henry Waxman (Cal.) introduced the bill…
Although health care cost and quality “transparency,” or information, is highly desirable and necessary to foster health care consumerism, the system still is a long way from having credible tools, according to an August report from the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC)…
The annual health care benefit cost trend is expected to grow at 5.7% in 2009, the lowest in more than ten years, according to the preliminary results of Mercer’s National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans 2008. In the first half of the decade, the average increases in health care benefit costs were in the double digits. In 2007, the increase was 6.1%. The survey’s complete results are scheduled to be released later this year, with some 3,000 respondents anticipated…
Employers believe that changes to current pension accounting standards are necessary, but most are not in favor of the changes proposed in the International Accounting Standards Board’s (IASB) preliminary views paper, according to a recent survey by Watson Wyatt Worldwide. With last week’s Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) vote to move the United States toward international accounting rules, the proposed IASB changes could have a significant impact on U.S. employers’ financial statements…
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