When a business or person is responsible for providing notice to another business or making that business aware of something, they must follow certain guidelines in conveying the information (e.g., sending it by registered mail on or before the required date), in order to show due diligence. Section 1-202(f) of the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.) defines “due diligence” and “the exercise of due diligence” broadly. The U.C.C.’s requirements for “due diligence” include:
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Internet
Employers in the United States must verify that new hires are eligible to work in the U.S. This responsibility was created by the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986, which drafted employers—on pain of being prosecuted themselves—into partnership with the federal government to deny job opportunities to unauthorized workers. Employers' compliance responsibilities are based on use of the I-9 Form ("Employment Eligibility Verification") issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). As information technology develops, USCIS has expanded electronic reporting and data management tools, the most important of which is called E-Verify. Both I-9's and E-Verify continue to evolve, and have received recent revisions.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Employee Rights, Workplace violence, Internet
Do you ever wonder whether auditing of greenhouse gas emissions is working? It may be a bit early in the game to say for sure, given that GHG emission tracking standards are a recent phenomenon. But an annual report compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) may be a good gauge of trends in emission reductions, judging by its latest installment.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Health & Safety, Environmental risks, Environmental, EHS, EPA, Greenhouse Gas, ghg
American workers suffer more than 190,000 illnesses and 50,000 deaths annually as a result of working with and being exposed to tens of thousands of chemicals every day. Workplace chemical exposures have been linked to cancers, and other lung, kidney, skin, heart, stomach, brain, nerve, and reproductive diseases. While many of these chemicals are suspected of being harmful, only a fraction of them are regulated in the workplace.
Tags: Business & Legal, Health & Safety, OSHA, Environmental risks, Environmental, Hazcom
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires employers to prepare and maintain records of occupational injuries and illnesses (I&Is), and to provide employees with annual summaries of I&I statistics for their "establishment." At present, OSHA and/or the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) can demand that selected employers report this information to them. BLS uses this information for statistical analyses of factors that cause workplace injuries and illnesses, and OSHA uses it to set rulemaking and enforcement priorities. In addition, OSHA requires all employers to report work-related accidents that result in one or more serious injuries or deaths (what OSHA calls "catastrophes").
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Employer Best Practices, Health & Safety, Employee Rights, Environmental
Dealers and brokers seeking hedging exposures to the Overnight Index Swap rate (OIS) are in luck. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently issued final guidance that allows dealer-brokers to designate the US OIS, the Fed Funds Effective Swap Rate, as a benchmark interest rate for hedge accounting purposes.
Tags: Business & Legal, SEC, Accounting & Tax, Accountants, US GAAP, GAAP
Most laws include penalty provisions, for assessment against people who fail to comply with legal responsibilities created by the laws. Back in 1996, Congress noticed that inflation was steadily reducing the deterrent effects of the penalties set forth in statutes, and that Congress itself was not reliably adjusting the maximum penalties assessable by enforcement personnel. Rather than burden itself with a responsibility to amend laws to keep up with inflation, Congress enacted the passed Debt Collection Improvement Act (DCIA) of 1996 to assign that responsibility to administrative agencies. DCIA requires most federal agencies to issue rules at least every 4 years, adjusting most penalties for inflation. In the ensuing 17 years, most agencies have made these periodic adjustments—larger in times of high inflation and lower in times of low inflation.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Environmental risks, Environmental, EPA
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, Health & Safety, Environmental risks, Environmental, Hazcom, Canadian
The SEC voted (3-2), on September 18, 2013, to propose pay ratio disclosure rules as required by Section 953(b) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. It has issued for public comment until December 2, 2013, its proposed rule, Pay Ratio Disclosure, requiring companies to disclose ratio of the chief executive officer’s (CEO’s) compensation to the median compensation of their employees. According to the SEC staff, registrants are given flexibility in calculating the median employee and total compensation for disclosure purposes based on their size, structure, and how they compensate their employees. Stakeholders who would like to have their views considered should act quickly to meet the December 2, 2013, deadline.
Tags: Corporate Governance, Business & Legal, SEC, Accounting & Tax, Accountants
A recent case in British Columbia’s Supreme Court illustrates the difficulty of winning damages for loss and injury attributed to mold.
Tags: Business & Legal, Environmental, Insurance, Insurance Claims, mold
