A Helpful Resource for Employee Legal Questions

As an employer and a manager, it is very important that you understand the importance and value of keeping up to date on the ever -changing laws and rules concerning dealing with employees.

In fact just today, the Supreme Court came out with a very, very important ruling concerning Title VII of the Civil Rights Act which covers anti-discrimination in dealing with employee interactions such as hiring, firing, sexual harassment, etc. You can read about this ruling in the following New York Times article: Supreme Court Finds Bias Against White Firefighters

As an example of this issue, some time ago my company was presented with a concern of an employee that wanted to take maternity leave from work as afforded to her by the Federal Medical Leave Act. Having some familiarity with the act, we were about to point out to her that the FMLA only applied to those companies with 50 employees or more. As our company, at that time, employed only 40 employees, we thought that we were exempt from this rule. With good foresight, though, we told her that we would check out the rules and get back to her the next day. We were very glad that we did this.

The Federal Medical Leave Act does indeed apply to employers with 50 or more employees. (For further information on the FMLA visit http://www.dol.gov/compliance/laws/comp-fmla.htm.) Had we just left the matter at that, and not looked into it further we could have made a grave error had we not granted the proper leave which would have created an unfortunate problem for my company and our employee. What we discovered was that our state also has a medical leave act that had very specific requirements of a company our size that we were required to comply with. Had we not taken the time to really look into the issue and not just work from one source we could have made a costly mistake.

As mentioned above, it is very important for any employer to stay up to date on the relevant laws, rules and regulations concerning dealing with employees. What is important to note is that each state has different laws in addition to the various Federal laws and regulations. Therefore it is vital for you to have a resource to investigate what your state’s parameters are. We therefore did some further research and can now give anyone reading this blog the exact website that you can go to find your states labor department. From reading through the site you can find the relevant laws and rules that will apply to a variety of employee situations and decisions you often make, similar to the example I gave above.

Below you will find, listed by state all of the sites in one easy to use location.

Alabama: http://dir.alabama.gov/
Alaska: http://www.labor.state.ak.us/
Arizona: http://www.ica.state.az.us/
Arkansas: http://www.arkansas.gov/labor/
California: http://www.labor.ca.gov
Colorado: http://www.coworkforce.com/
Connecticut: http://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/
Delaware: http://www.delawareworks.com/
District of Columbia: http://does.ci.washington.dc.us/does/site/default.asp
Florida: http://www.floridajobs.org/
Georgia: http://www.dol.state.ga.us/
Hawaii: http://hawaii.gov/labor
Idaho: http://labor.idaho.gov/dnn/Default.aspx?alias=labor.idaho.gov/dnn/idl
Illinois: http://www.state.il.us/agency/idol/
Indiana: http://www.in.gov/dol/
Iowa: http://www.iowaworkforce.org/labor/
Kansas: http://www.dol.ks.gov/index.html
Kentucky: http://labor.ky.gov/
Louisiana: http://www.ldol.state.la.us/
Maine: http://www.state.me.us/labor/
Maryland: http://www.dllr.state.md.us/
Massachusetts: http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=elwdagencylanding&L=4&L0=Home&L1=Government&L2=Departments+and+Divisions+(EOLWD)&L3=Department+of+Labor&sid=Elwd
Michigan: http://www.michigan.gov/dleg
Minnesota: http://www.dli.mn.gov/main.asp
Mississippi: http://www.mdes.ms.gov/wps/portal#null
Missouri: http://www.dolir.mo.gov/
Montana: http://dli.mt.gov/
Nebraska: http://www.dol.state.ne.us/
Nevada: http://www.laborcommissioner.com/
New Hampshire: http://www.labor.state.nh.us/
New Jersey: http://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/index.shtml
New Mexico: http://www.dws.state.nm.us/
New York: http://www.labor.state.ny.us/
North Carolina: http://www.nclabor.com/
North Dakota: http://www.nd.gov/labor/
Ohio: http://ohio.gov/working/
Oklahoma: http://www.ok.gov/odol/
Oregon: http://www.boli.state.or.us/
Pennsylvania: http://www.dli.state.pa.us/
Rhode Island: http://www.dlt.ri.gov/
South Carolina: http://www.llr.state.sc.us/
South Dakota: http://dol.sd.gov/
Tennessee: http://www.state.tn.us/labor-wfd/
Texas: http://www.twc.state.tx.us/
Utah: http://laborcommission.utah.gov/
Vermont: http://www.labor.vermont.gov/
Virginia: http://www.doli.virginia.gov/
Washington: http://www.lni.wa.gov/
West Virginia: http://www.wvlabor.org/home.html
Wisconsin: http://www.dwd.state.wi.us/
Wyoming: http://wydoe.state.wy.us/



I hope you find your state’s web site just as valuable and informative as we have with our state. As always, if you have a specific concern with a legal problem, or if you have a specific legal question, always consult a licensed and board certified attorney in your state.


Larry Silver
President, Silkin Management Group

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