HR Regulatory Frameworks & Compliance 4 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Under the WARN Act, a software company plans to lay off 120 of its 350 employees. What is the required advance notice period?
- 30 days
- 60 days (Correct answer)
- 90 days
- No notice required for tech layoffs
Correct answer: 60 days
The federal WARN Act requires 60 days' advance notice when an employer with 100+ employees lays off 50 or more workers at a single site within a 30-day period.
Question 2: An HR system vendor wants to use employee performance data to train its own AI models. Under GDPR, what must the vendor obtain first?
- A data processing agreement is sufficient
- Explicit consent from each affected employee or another valid legal basis under Article 6 (Correct answer)
- Only the employer's written permission
- GDPR does not apply to B2B SaaS platforms
Correct answer: Explicit consent from each affected employee or another valid legal basis under Article 6
GDPR requires a valid legal basis (such as explicit consent or legitimate interest with balancing test) for each processing purpose; using data for AI training beyond the original purpose requires re-evaluation.
Question 3: Which agency enforces the Equal Pay Act and investigates gender-based wage discrimination in the software industry?
- Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division only
- EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) (Correct answer)
- OFCCP
- NLRB
Correct answer: EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission)
The EEOC enforces the Equal Pay Act of 1963 along with other federal anti-discrimination laws.
Question 4: A software company's 401(k) plan has a 3-year cliff vesting schedule. An employee leaves after 2 years and 11 months. What happens to employer contributions?
- The employee keeps 50% of employer contributions
- The employee forfeits all employer contributions because cliff vesting requires full 3 years (Correct answer)
- The employee keeps all contributions due to ERISA's break-in-service rules
- Vesting is irrelevant; all 401(k) contributions are immediately vested
Correct answer: The employee forfeits all employer contributions because cliff vesting requires full 3 years
Under cliff vesting, an employee must complete the full vesting period (3 years in this case) to receive any employer contributions; leaving one month early means forfeiture of all employer contributions.
Question 5: Under the CCPA, which right allows California employees of a software company to request deletion of their personal information held by the employer?
- Right to Portability
- Right to Delete (Right to Erasure) (Correct answer)
- Right to Opt-Out of Sale
- Right to Non-Discrimination
Correct answer: Right to Delete (Right to Erasure)
The CCPA grants California consumers (including employees covered by the 2023 CPRA amendments) the right to request deletion of their personal information, subject to certain exceptions.
Question 6: Which section of the Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits document abuse and national origin discrimination in I-9 verification?
- Section 101
- Section 274B (Correct answer)
- Section 245A
- Section 212
Correct answer: Section 274B
INA Section 274B prohibits unfair immigration-related employment practices, including document abuse (requesting more or different documents than required) and national origin discrimination during I-9 verification.
Question 7: A Texas software company wants to conduct post-accident drug testing after a developer is injured. What federal framework permits this?
- HIPAA allows post-accident testing if disclosed in the privacy notice
- DOT regulations mandate post-accident testing for safety-sensitive positions (Correct answer)
- OSHA's anti-retaliation rule prohibits all post-accident drug testing
- No federal law addresses post-accident drug testing
Correct answer: DOT regulations mandate post-accident testing for safety-sensitive positions
DOT regulations require post-accident drug and alcohol testing for employees in safety-sensitive transportation positions; OSHA's 2016 anti-retaliation rule restricts testing that discourages injury reporting but does not ban all post-accident testing.
HR Regulatory Frameworks & Compliance 4
Under the WARN Act, a software company plans to lay off 120 of its 350 employees.
What is the required advance notice period?