Rojgar Job News

At this week’s CHRO information session, I was able to review the new statistics released by the CHRO this fall regarding case filings and dismissals. They’ve now been posted live on the CHRO’s website here. It’s something I’ve covered each year and I’m always fascinated by what these statistics show — and don’t show. What’s the big takeaway this year? The trend of increasing numbers of discrimination complaints being filed that we have seen in Connecticut since 2012 (when just 1838 complaints were filed) is showing no signs of abating. Indeed, in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016, 2616 complaints were filed, up from 2482 the year before.  Thus from FY 2012 to FY 2016, that’s a huge 42 percent increase in the number of claims filed. Now, not all complaints with the CHRO are employment-related. But as with prior years, that number has been going up as well. For FY 2016, there were 2160 such complaints filed, up fro...

So a few weeks back, I suggested that we were entering into a new era of sexual harassment cases and wondered out loud when the statistics would back up my observations. We now have our first signs.  Maybe. In my exclusive continued look at the case statistics from the Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, we can see the first signs of an increase. But as I’ll explain below, it’s difficult to know if this is a statistical anomaly. Despite significant drops in most types of discrimination complaints, the number of sexual harassment complaints in Connecticut went up last fiscal year to 145, up from 135 the year before. As a percentage of overall claims, sex harassment employment claims are just 3 percent of the overall claims filed, up from 2.5 percent the prior year. But here’s the issue: When you look back at prior fiscal years in 2014 and 2015, the number of sex harassment claims is still below those years. In other words, is it a trend u...

As part of my continuing series of posts about the CHRO, and following up from the 75th Anniversary panel discussion earlier this week, I wanted to provide an early look of the statistics that are soon to be released by the agency. I was provided a preliminary draft in preparation for the panel presentation; it should be out in the next week or two and I was asked not to divulge the specific numbers.  Stay tuned for my deep dive into the numbers when they are officially released. (As a refresher, you can see last year’s numbers here.) But there are few trends that are readily apparent from the draft. First, as we have all suspected, sexual harassment claims filed with the CHRO are up substantially over the prior year.  This is not too surprising given the publicity regarding the #metoo movement.  Still, we haven’t seen these types of numbers in nearly 15 years.  When the final numbers are released, expect a big increase in sexual harassment claims from FY...

Earlier this morning (Friday, May 17th), the state Senate approved of a measure that will increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2023. House Bill 5004 (as amended) can be downloaded here. The bill had previously passed the House and now moves to the Governor’s office where he is expected to sign it. There are several key components to the bill that are important for employers. YEARLY INCREASES TO MINIMUM WAGE The bill increases the minimum wage from the current level of $10.10 per hour as follows: $11.00 on October 1, 2019 $12.00 on September 1, 2020 $13.00 on August 1, 2021 $14.00 on July 1, 2022 $15.00 on June 1, 2023 But perhaps even more importantly, beginning January 1, 2024, it indexes future annual minimum wage changes to the federal employment cost index for “wages and salaries for all civilian workers”.  (As of the March 2019 ECI, the compensation costs increased 2.8 percent, by way of example) TRAINING WAGES Starting October 1, 2019, ...