The Department of Labor has put together new model notices for the program, which extends employee eligibility for the 65% premium subsidy until Feb. 28. The assistance period’s also been extended, from nine months to 15.

For information on the new notice requirements, go here.

The impetus for the move came in the form of a recent report titled “Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America’s Cities.”

The report was based on face-to-face interviews with about 4,000 workers in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. It was published by the Center for Urban Economic Development at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the National Employment Law Project and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.

A sample of the study’s findings:

• 76% who had worked overtime the previous week claimed they were not paid time-and-a-half for it.
• 26% said they were being paid less than the minimum wage.
• 75% of those interviewed earned less than $10 an hour.
• 69% of workers who were entitled to a meal break said they received no break at all, had their break shortened, were interrupted by their employer or worked during the break.
• 20% said they had made a complaint to their employer or attempted to form a union in the last year; of those, 43% said they’d experienced some form of retaliation — such as getting fired or being threatened with a pay cut.

So the violations that jumped out at DOL involve OT pay, minimum-wage violations, denied breaks mandated by law and illegal retaliation.

The study found that minimum-wage violation rates were most common in apparel and textile manufacturing, personal and repair services, and private households. Violation rates were substantially lower in residential construction, social assistance and education, and home health care.

Women were significantly more likely than men to experience minimum wage violations, and foreign-born workers were nearly twice as likely as U.S.-born workers to suffer a minimum-wage violation, according to the report.

Click here to see the full report in PDF format.

Based on activity among its member institutions, the Federal Reserve has released its predictions on which parts of the country are likely to see a rise, or a drop, in business.

The predictions come out of the Fed’s “Beige Book” breakdown of economic conditions in the 12 Federal Reserve Bank districts marked by cities. When the economic conditions show signs of increase, that’s usually followed by an increase in jobs.

Some highlights from the report:

• The New York, Cleveland, Kansas City, MO, and San Francisco regions are showing “signs of stabilization.”
• Chicago and St. Louis reported that the pace of economic decline appeared to be “moderating.”
• Boston, Philadelphia, Richmond, Atlanta and Dallas described activity as “slow,” “subdued” or “weak.”
• Minneapolis was the only region that indicated its downward slide in economic activity had worsened.

That’s the overall picture. The Fed also breaks down activity in economic sectors. For instance:

• Boston, Kansas City and San Francisco reported retail activity described as “modest increases or less negative.”
• Philadelphia, Atlanta, St. Louis, New York and Dallas regions reported “flat or mixed sales.” The remaining Fed regions described retail sales as “soft.”
• Auto sales were mixed; travel and tourism was down almost across the board.
• For manufacturing, Richmond, Chicago and Kansas City showed some improvement. St. Louis and Dallas said the rate of decline in factory activity is moderating. The Philadelphia and Minneapolis regions saw manufacturing activity drop, while the rest of the regions described activity at “low levels.”
• Residential real estate remained “soft” in most Fed regions, and commercial real estate dropped.

In a related story, the U.S. Department of Labor issued its report on what it calls the Employment Cost Index — essentially, the rise or fall in what it costs employers to provide wages and benefits.

DOL’s statistics for the 2nd quarter of ‘09 show a rise of 0.3%, about the same as the figure for the 1st quarter. That measurement nearly matches the 0.2% figure estimated by economic forecaster Global Insight.

Click here to see the Fed’s full Beige Book summary.

That’s the upshot of a recent Opinion Letter from the Department of Labor (DOL), which clarifies the confusion surrounding the agency’s “two-day rule.”

FMLA regs require employees to provide 30 days’ notice for any leave that’s foreseeable (like childbirth). But when the need’s unforeseeable — like a sudden illness — the rules have been a little muddier.

That’s because a 1999 opinion letter stated that employees had two business days to let their employers know they’d be out on FMLA leave — and the employer couldn’t penalize workers who didn’t follow company notification procedures, if those procedures were stricter than the two-day requirement.

Early this year, FMLA rules were officially changed to allow employers to require that employees follow internal notification policies when asking for covered leave. The recent opinion letter reiterates the new FMLA rules and rescinds the 1999 letter.

Bottom line: You can ask employees to follow your normal notification procedures when asking for FMLA leave.

For a look at the recent letter (DOL Opinion Letter FMLA2009-1-A), go here.