Butterball, LLC will pay $230,000 and change how it handles medical leave requests to settle a federal lawsuit over a long-term employee who was fired while undergoing chemotherapy, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced on September 15, 2026. The EEOC said the worker at the company’s Mt. Olive, North Carolina, operation asked for intermittent…

Several subsidiaries of North American Stamping Group, an international maker of car parts, will pay $620,000 and accept two years of federal monitoring to settle a sex harassment and discrimination lawsuit, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced on September 22, 2026. The EEOC had alleged that the company shut more than a dozen women…

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…

Three Accenture entities have agreed to pay the United States $25 million to resolve allegations that employment decisions conflicted with anti-discrimination promises made in federal contracts. The case reaches hiring, promotion, training and mentoring practices, not merely one rejected applicant. It is a civil settlement, and the government says there has been no determination of…

A denied raise is carrying a $65,000 consequence for agricultural-technology company Lely North America. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says its investigation found that a former employee was denied a wage increase because of sex and later faced age-based harassment and constructive discharge. The matter ended through a conciliation agreement rather than a court judgment.…

A small business does not have to select one group health plan and absorb every premium increase in order to offer a tax-favored health benefit. A federal arrangement now promoted under the name CHOICE lets an employer set a monthly contribution while employees buy qualifying individual coverage. The model changes who chooses the policy, but…