The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the U.S. Small Business Administration are promoting CHOICE Arrangements, the new name for Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, or ICHRAs, as a way for small employers to set a predictable monthly budget for health benefits. Instead of absorbing rising premiums on a traditional group plan, an employer…

A fall hazard can become a business-cost story long before a citation becomes final. OSHA has proposed $265,868 in penalties against Martin Araujo, doing business as Araujo Construction Corp. of Calumet City, Illinois, after inspections at two job sites where workers installing roof rafters and sheathing faced falls of up to 25 feet. The agency’s…

The Department of Labor’s enforcement arm closed out its fiscal year with the largest wage-recovery total in six years. Investigators inside the Wage and Hour Division built cases against employers who shorted paychecks — some through unpaid overtime, some through flat minimum-wage violations — and by the close of the fiscal year the agency had…

A payroll investigation that began in 2024 at a South Carolina restaurant group closed this year with a six-figure repayment order. Investigators found workers shortchanged in three separate ways at once: managers dipping into servers’ tip pools, hours split across two job sites to dodge overtime rules, and teenagers scheduled well past the hours federal…

When the open enrollment packet lands this fall, most workers flip straight to the premium line. A new read on employer health plans for 2027, from the benefits consultancy Mercer, found that roughly two-thirds of employers with 500 or more workers expect to raise the share of that premium employees pay next year. The shift…