Wall Street Journal (02/15/12) Naftali Bendavid; Kristina Peterson

Congressional negotiators reached a tentative a deal Tuesday night on extending the current payroll-tax cut through Dec. 31, as well as continuing longer unemployment benefits and avoiding a steep cut in Medicare doctors’ fees. The agreement followed a significant concession from House Republicans earlier in the week when they acquiesced to extend the payroll-tax break without paying for spending cuts. The deal could be formalized as early as today.

JDSupra (02/14/2012)

The federal government will begin accepting the filing of H-1B worker petitions for fiscal year 2013 starting April 1, 2012. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will accept new petitions after April 1 until the H-1B cap is reached. The cap is 65,000 for FY 2012, with another 20,000 available for people who have earned at least a U.S. master’s degree. Although last year the cap was not reached until November, in previous years the cap was reached in the first few days of April, so employers are advised to have their petitions prepared for filing by March 30.

HR Morning (02/10/12) Tim Gould

A recent court case illustrates the growing danger to employers if they retaliate against wage-and-hour complaints. Kathy Minor was a medical technologist for Virginia-based Bostwick Laboratories. She and several co-workers met with Bostwick’s chief operating officer to complain that their supervisor altered workers’ time sheets on a regular basis to avoid showing the overtime hours they’d worked. Bostwick fired Minor within a week, saying there was “too much conflict with (her) supervisors and the relationship just (wasn’t) working.”

Minor sued, alleging the company fired her for making the complaint. In court, the company said it couldn’t be liable for retaliation, because an internal, informal complaint concerning a Fair Labor Standards Act issue isn’t protected and that a formal, official claim is the only activity covered under the statute. A lower court agreed with Bostwick, but an appeals court reversed the decision. The appeals court referenced a U.S. Supreme Court decision in which it ruled that an oral complaint could be protected under the FLSA if it’s “sufficiently clear … for a reasonable employer to understand it … as an assertion of rights under the statute.”

The bottom line for employers: Even the most casual mentions of possible wage-and-hour disputes may qualify as “claims”—and any action taken to discipline the employees involved might be considered retaliation by a judge.

Lexology (02/08/12)

There are several things employers undergoing audits by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should do, according to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices. They should have a transparent process in place for communicating with employees during the audit, give employees a reasonable length of time to correct discrepancies in their records, and treat all workers the same regardless of their national origin or citizenship status. Additionally, companies should let unions know about the ICE audit, inform employees of the audit when requesting information related to the audit, and ensure that the information sought is described in writing.

Employers should not verify the employment eligibility of certain workers based on national origin or citizenship status or issue terminations or suspensions without notice or without giving employees time to submit valid Form I-9 documents. Among other things, employees who look or sound foreign should not be treated differently.