Equifax Workforce Solutions will present a free webinar about the challenges that come up in managing the Form I-9 process for remote new hires as well as 2015 trends in worksite enforcement.

The webinar will be Thursday, Feb. 12, at 12 p.m. Central time.

Montserrat Miller, a partner at Arnall Golden Gregory, LLP will discuss I-9 challenges for remote hires and also provide her forecast for 2015 trends in immigration issues that affect employers and their compliance with the Form I-9 and E-Verify requirements.

Miller will be joined by Chad Whittenberg, Senior Director of Product Management for I-9 & E-Verify, for a discussion about best practices in managing the remote I-9 process.

Topics:
–Remote hires – completion of the Form I-9, physical inspection of the documents presented by new hires and employees and tips for improving compliance during the hiring process
–High risk areas of the I-9 process for authorized representatives with little experience
–States’ issuance of driver’s licenses to undocumented residents and implications for the Form I-9
–Issues that can come up during the E-Verify process due to employees’ use of MyE-Verify
–Developments related to the President’s executive action on immigration and what it means for the workforce and I-9 compliance
–Status of immigration reform on Capitol Hill; and 2015 trends in Form I-9 and E-Verify compliance.

Register for the webinar.

Merrill DataSite is offering a complimentary report designed to help take the guesswork out of choosing a contract management system. This tool will help determine an organization’s precise contract management needs – from storage to reporting and security, Merrill reports.

In addition to understanding the core requirement categories for contract management solutions, you will also learn what questions to ask, including:

• What information do I frequently need to search for?
• What reports do people ask for on a regular basis?
• What data security concerns are unique to your industry?

Download the free report.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. agreed to pay $99.5 million to settle its portion of an antitrust lawsuit in which investors accuse 12 major banks of rigging prices in the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign exchange market, reports Reuters.

The settlement is the first in the nationwide litigation and resolved claims over JPMorgan’s role in alleged collusion among banks since January 2003 to manipulate the WM/Reuters Closing Spot Rates, known as the Fix.

Investors including hedge funds, pension funds and the city of Philadelphia accused the 12 banks, which controlled 84 percent of the global currency trading market, of having impeded competition by conspiring to manipulate the Fix in chat rooms, instant messages and emails.

Read the story.

Portland, Oregon-based Daimler Trucks North America reached a $2.4 million settlement with six former employees who last year filed civil rights complaints alleging violent threats and racism in the workplace, reports The Oregonian.

An investigation included interviews with more than 60 current and former Daimler employees and supervisors and review of hundreds of documents pertaining to the Portland truck manufacturing plant’s operations.

Daimler agreed to compensate employees for damages and comply with measures to ensure workers are free of harassment and discrimination in the workplace, according to The Oregonian‘s report. Among the measures, the company will install a civil rights complaint hotline for workers and train at least two managers to conduct internal investigations addressing any future incidents.

Read the story.

The former general counsel of a bankrupted South Florida law firm that was at the center of a massive fraud was sentenced Jan. 30 to 18 months in federal prison for his role in helping managing partner Scott Rothstein swindle investors by selling them “income” from faked settlements, reports the ABA Journal.

David Boden, 53, has cooperated with the government from the start and is expected to testify against other defendants charged in connection with the schemes for which the former Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler chief is now serving 50 years. Prosecutors said Boden verified that the claimed settlements sold by Rothstein, which involved fictitious individuals and entities, were legitimate.

Read the story.

A recent poll by the Association of Corporate Counsel found that more than half of in-house lawyers said work-life balance was a large factor in their decision to choose an in-house position.

The ACC polled more than 30,000 lawyers to gain insight into how organizations and leaders can benefit from the positive business outcomes of encouraging and fostering a climate of work-life balance for corporate lawyers.

The poll showed:

• Globally, Canada and the United States rate their happiness with work-life balance more positively than those from Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Asia Pacific and Latin America.
• One in five in-house lawyers who are caregivers have had to leave a job for one that better supports their caregiving role, and 4 percent quit work entirely. One in five will consider making a change in role or position in the coming year.
• Seventy percent of women caregivers say their caregiving role has had a negative impact on their opportunities for career advancement.

See the report.

Silanis Technologies has posted online a free white paper on the benefits of a fully electronic contracting process, extending beyond a streamlined workflow.

Pressure to transact faster, more efficiently and from the convenience of mobile devices is accelerating the adoption of e-contracting, Silanis says on its website. “If you’ve ever had to sign a contract with an organization that is not using e-signature technology, you are familiar with the additional work that can easily consume 30 minutes per interaction – open an email, print a document, sign it, scan it into digital format, convert it to PDF, email it to the vendor and archive it. Keeping the process digital saves these time-consuming tasks.”

But the benefits of a fully electronic contracting process extend beyond a streamlined workflow, Silanis says.

Download the white paper.

iCONECT Development, LLC, a technology leader that develops intuitive, web-based eDiscovery software and Nuix, a technology company that enables people to make fact-based decisions from unstructured data, announce they have competed delivery of “Direct to Database” (D2D) integration between Nuix eDiscovery and iCONECT-XERA.

From within the Nuix eDiscovery Workbench, Nuix users can now automatically create an iCONECT-XERA database and transfer extracted document data for review.

The near-complete elimination of manual inputs enables a much faster data migration process than was previously possible, iCONNECT says on its website.

“Our testing shows a 60% reduction in the amount of administrator time spent compared to the traditional import-export process,” says Iram Arras, iCONECT’s Vice President, Product Strategy. “The automated database configuration process also reduces errors and time spent correcting mistakes.”

Read more.

Lux Research will present a complimentary webinaron poor recovery factors plague tight oil production.

The webinar will be Tuesday, Feb. 3, at 11 a.m. Eastern time.

On its website, Lux Research says the advent of tight oil has rescued North America’s oil industry from a slow, painful decline and has transformed it into one of the world’s premier oil producing regions. However, dismal recovery factors still plague tight oil production, with many producers recovering just 5% of the oil in place. As plays mature, producers’ long-term health depends on its ability to squeeze far more oil from each well.

This webinar will cover:

• How will incremental improvements in recovery effect overall production?
• What are the challenges limiting recovery today?
• Who are the technology developers attempting to meet these challenges?

Register for the webinar.

The U.S. House of Representatives has approved the Natural Gas Pipeline Permitting Reform Act bipartisan bill (H.R. 161), legislation that could speed up the permit process for the construction of natural gas pipelines, reports Pennsylvania Business Daily.

Co-sponsored by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA), the bill seeks to eliminate permit regulations that are hindering the extraction, transportation and distribution of shale gas.

The bill now must be voted on by the U.S. the Senate.

Read the story.

Wells Fargo & Co. recently snagged two former Bank of America Corp. high-ranking lawyers to fill openings in its litigation and workout division, the bank confirmed, reports The Wall Street Journal‘s Moneybeat blog.

Craig Baldauf, a former Bank of American interim director of litigation and regulatory investigations, plans to join Wells Fargo on Feb. 23 as a deputy general counsel, the San Francisco-based lender said. He most recently served as head of global litigation for Toronto-based TD Bank Group, after leaving Bank of America in 2011.

Bob McGahan, former associate general counsel of litigation and regulatory inquiries at Bank of America, joined Wells Fargo Jan. 20 as an assistant general counsel.

Moneybeat says both will work on litigation and regulatory matters across the bank.

Read the story.

A free on-demand webinar sponsored by NEC Energy Solutions discusses various applications for energy storage on the grid and how they can be used to help grid operators, generators, or utility companies meet the challenges of ensuring reliability and increasing the efficiency of existing resources or infrastructure.

Actual real world case studies describe how these grid storage solutions were configured from standard modular building blocks and deployed to solve challenges for their owners. The webinar covers the application modelling and configuration process, the installation and commissioning, as well as actual results from select cases.

NEC presenters are Roger Lin, Director, Product Marketing, and Rhys Foster, Senior Sales Engineer.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

The U.S. Supreme Court declined Jan. 26 to hear an appeal by a former BP Plc executive who contested whether he can be charged with obstruction of Congress for downplaying the severity of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Reuters reports.

Prosecutors say David Rainey, the company’s exploration vice president, misled members of Congress over the amount of oil spilled in the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident.

Reuters says Rainey’s legal argument on appeal was that the government missed the deadline to file an appeal after a district court judge dismissed his obstruction charge.

Read the story.

Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer hired Jay Jorgensen in 2013 to help overhaul a company badly shaken by allegations its executives regularly bribed officials in Mexico to speed up store construction. Jorgensen, Global Chief Compliance Officer, says Walmart has spent $100 million over the past two years hiring thousands of employees to work on compliance, reorganizing its corporate structure, training workers and rolling out new technology.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Justice Department continue to investigate Walmart, according to a report in SFGate.

Walmart now trains contractors on the company’s ethics policies and requires them to sign contracts requiring them to follow U.S. law.

Read the story.

National Council on Compensation Insurance offers a free on-demand webinar exploring the workers compensation implications of the fracking industry, as well as federal and state legislative and regulatory issues.

On its website, NCCI says oil and gas issues, especially hydraulic fracturing (fracking), have been receiving increased attention in the legislatures and media. Fracking is the process of enabling the extraction of natural gas from shale deep below ground.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Knovel has posted a free on-demand webinar discussing risk mitigation and new rules, standards and regulations and the consequences of non-compliance regarding corrosion in the oil and gas industry.

The webinar covers the 5M Scorecard Methodology – Modeling, Mitigation, Monitoring, Maintenance and Management; how to implement an integrity management program; and the best practices to communicate to the public.

Featured speakers are Dr. Sankara Papavinasam, President of CorrMagnet Consulting Inc. of Ottawa, Ontario; and Dr. Pavan K. Shukl, Senior Research Engineer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

Watch the on-demand webinar.

SilkRoad has posted a free on-demand webinar offering a look into the strategic practices of more than 300 HR professionals as told by their responses to SilkRoad’s recent Strategic HR Survey.

The webinar covers topics such as:

• Do your HR strategies align with company goals?

• How do you measure the effectiveness of human resources on the organization’s bottom-line?

• Are you meeting with top-level executives to establish guidelines for HR planning?

• Have you aligned workforce plans with individual departmental goals?

• How frequently do you measure and benchmark HR initiatives?

• Are you developing a reactive or strategic HR practice?

Watch the on-demand webinar.

A free on-demand webinar presented by Platts looks at some of the reasons for sharp fall in crude oil prices and discusses how markets might evolve in 2015 as key participants react.

Crude oil prices have fallen by 25 percent in months, waking a sleeping giant in OPEC and presenting the first credible existential threat to U.S. tight oil production since the revolutionary technology burst onto the scene in 2010, Platts says on its website.

In the webinar, Platts editors Dave Ernsberger and Beth Evans, discuss:

• Why have prices fallen so steeply in recent months?
• What steps might OPEC take next, and how effective can it be?
• Is US tight oil production under threat?

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Courts weighing whether union retirees have vested lifetime health-care benefits should apply ordinary contract principles, rather than special inferences or presumptions, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, Bloomberg BNA reports.

The unanimous Jan. 26 opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas is largely a win for employers, which may now have more freedom to alter, reduce or eliminate the health-care benefits they provide to retired union workers.

Bloomberg BNA says the court invalidated what has become known as the Yard-Man inference, a judicial inference applied by the retiree-friendly U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to find that retiree health-care benefits are vested for life in the absence of specific language to the contrary in a plan document or collective bargaining agreement.

Read the story.

CPEhr presents a complimentary on-demand webinar on human resources outsourcing, one of fastest growing sectors of the outsourcing industry.

From Obamacare and Workers’ Compensation, to harassment, discrimination and fair-pay regulations, the volume of employment-related laws has skyrocketed in the past 20 years, the firm says on its website. Small employers with little or no spare resources to focus on these matters are understandably overwhelmed.

This 60 minute webinar discusses the challenges facing employers in today’s economy, and how outsourcing various human resource functions can significantly help alleviate those challenges.

Watch the on-demand webinar.