E-Verify way to check employee status

December 19th, 2008

E-Verify is an Internet-based system operated by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in partnership with the Social Security Administration (SSA), and is currently free to employers and is available in all 50 states. E-Verify provides an automated link to federal databases to help employers determine  employment eligibility of new hires and the validity of their Social Security numbers. According to its Web site, www.uscis.gov/e-verify, E-Verify virtually eliminates Social Security mismatch letters, improves the accuracy of wage and tax reporting, protects jobs for authorized U.S. workers, and helps U.S. employers maintain a legal workforce.

An employer may initiate a query after an individual accepts an offer of employment and after the employee and employer complete the Form I-9. The employer must initiate the query no later than the end of three business days after the new hire’s actual start date.

An employer may initiate the query before a new hire’s actual start date; however, it may not pre-screen applicants and may not delay training or an actual start date based upon a tentative non-confirmation or a delay in the receipt of a confirmation of employment authorization. An employee should not face any adverse employment consequences based upon an employer’s use of E-Verify unless a query results in a final nonconfirmation.

In addition, an employer cannot use an employment authorization response to speed up an employee’s start date. You can register for E-Verify at https://www.vis-dhs.com/EmployerRegistration, which provides instructions for completing the registration process. At the end of the registration process, you will be required to sign a Memorandum of Understanding that provides the terms of agreement between you the employer, the SSA, and USCIS.

Card-check bill a threat to small business

December 19th, 2008

Bo Bryant, Government Relations Director with McDonalds Corp., alerted operators in November about the potentially devastating card-check legislation at the Raleigh Region ROA in Charlotte, N.C. This proposal would eliminate the secret ballot employees currently enjoy when deciding whether to unionize. Doing so would make it shockingly easy for unions to organize your staff and crew. In fact, if this proposal passes, you could leave your store on Friday and return to a union shop on Monday, without having had any  opportunity to communicate with your employees about their options, Bryant said. We encourage all our clients to educate themselves about this critical threat to their businesses and voice their opinions to their legislators.
For a list of your Senators and Representatives, visit www.senate.gov and www.house.gov.

Are you backing up your data?

December 17th, 2008

It is very important that you consider a backup strategy that will protect your critical data in the event of an emergency.It is not uncommon that your computer stops working due to virus or hardware failure.If you have not been backing up your data your recovery times will be much longer than necessary.Consider the amount of work that you do in a day and how much time it would take to re-create all of that information from scratch.We recommend that you backup all of your data every day.If you have a network, all of your data should be stored in one location that is backed up each night.It is also important that you use multiple disks when backing up. Backup media will fail eventually, and when it does, you don’t want to find out at the wrong time. Most backup schemes should include at least five different backup tapes, one for each day of the week. Programs like RTI and Quicken prompt you to backup at regular intervals, and it is our opinion that you should still maintain these backups along with your nightly backups. Often these backups are a more efficient way to recover from program errors. When you have made your nightly backup a responsible employee should be taking this backup offsite each day. If your office burns down, you will not want all of your backup tapes to burn with the building. Currently you can buy a 2GB USB flash drive for less than 30 dollars. Buy several of these and rotate them nightly for backups. The firm does keep some of the files that you upload for a limited time, but you should not let this replace a well thought out backup strategy.