November 2016 Focus
New Salary Minimums go into effect December 1st
Are you ready for the new minimum salary requirements for Exempt employees? Effective December 1st, all employees who are “Exempt” from the Fair Labor Standards Act’s overtime rules will have to be paid a minimum salary of $913 each week or the employer will be required to pay the employee 1.5 times their regular rate of pay for any hours worked over 40 in a work week. There are three requirements an employee must meet in order to be considered “Exempt” from the FLSA overtime rules. The employee has to meet the “Duties Test”, must be paid a fixed salary, and the salary must be a minimum of $913 per week. MWG Employer Services Manager, Joel Jasper, spoke about these issues on the Gallo Radio show on SuperTalk radio on September 28th. You can listen to a recording of the broadcast by clicking here.
Payroll and Human Resource Basic Level Training Classes are off to a Good Start
MWG Employer Services held it’s first Payroll Basics and HR Basics classes at the Ridgeland Campus of Holmes Community College on October 18th and 19th. Most administrators in payroll or human resource positions were placed into these positions from another position within an organization and had to learn from the school of “Hard Knocks”. So, we created a one-day course for basic payroll administration and a one-day course for human resource basics. We will be holding each class once a month at the Holmes Community College Ridgeland campus. The cost of each class is $300 and includes desk reference for future use. Fall Payroll classes are scheduled for November 15th and December 6th. HR classes will be held November 18th and December 7th. Classes are limited to the first 24 registrants.
Click here to register for one of the remaining fall classes. We will announce the spring class schedule next month.
New I-9 Forms Scheduled to be released November 22nd
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has announced they will release an updated Form I-9 on November 22nd. The current version (Rev. 03/08/2013) can be used until January 21, 2017. We will provide links to the new version and instructions in December, if it is released on time.
ProSential Group Webinars for November
As a client of MWG Employer Services, we are pleased to offer free educational webinars each month by the ProSential Group. Previous webinars are available through the ProSential Group Client Portal. To register for this month’s webinars, click on the links below.
Compliance Year in Review and a Look Ahead to 2017
Tuesday, November 15, 2016
Effective Interviews: The Dos and Don’ts of Employee Selection
Thursday, November 17, 2016
The Simple Truth: by Joel Jasper
As I listened to the presidential debates, I couldn’t help but get angry at all politicians when they talk about health care. I don’t care which side of the aisle you are on, they all avoid the elephant in the room. That is, they will never fix the cost of health insurance in the U.S. until they actually tackle the real problem... the actual cost of “Health Care." Insurance is nothing more than the financing mechanism for health care. Under the ACA, all health insurers must pay 80-85% of the premiums they receive on actual claims. I’d love for someone to show me one other industry in the U.S. that is required to spend 80-85% of what they take in on their product or service, only leaving 15-20% to pay employees, overhead, taxes and little room for a profit.
So, let’s just suppose 100% of your premium is going to pay claims. Would the premiums now become magically “Affordable”? Not even close. The cost of “Health Care” has been outpacing the inflation rate for all other goods and services for over 30 years. Don’t take my word for it, look it up yourself on the Consumer Price Index. The insurance issue is just a smoke screen to keep most of the public from focusing on the real problem which is what is being charged by the medical providers for their services. The simple truth is, if WE don’t do something about the cost of health care in this country, the industry will eventually implode under its own financial weight. I have one idea and I’m sure there could be more. If the Public Service Commission can regulate just about every other basic service, why not Health Care?