Daily headlines about the growing coronavirus threat have many employers concerned that they are not doing all they should to protect employees without undue disruption to operations. Here are some answers that may inform your own response plan.
Category: Counseling & Compliance Training
New Amendment to the PA Background Check Requirements for Employees Who Have Contact with Children
Effective December 31, 2019, Pennsylvania amended section 6344(m) of the Child Protective Services Law (CPSL), which pertains to background checks for employees who have contact with children. Specifically, the amendment prohibits employers, administrators, supervisors or other persons responsible for employment decisions from employing applicants on a provisional basis absent a waiver from the department. Child day-care centers, group day-care homes or family child-care homes may apply for a one-time extension not to exceed 45 days only if the following conditions are met.
Retaining Independent Contractors in New Jersey Just Got Even Riskier
On January 21, 2020, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed into law three bills that increase the potential pitfalls for businesses that rely on independent contractors. One new law adds to the penalties for misclassifying employees as independent contractors. Another new law imposes liability on businesses ─ including potential liability on individual managers ─ that use staffing companies that misclassify workers. The third new law adopts new posting requirements and anti-retaliation provisions.
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Restructuring the Analysis: New Jersey Now Mandates Severance Pay for Mass Layoffs
On January 21, 2020, Governor Murphy signed Senate Bill 3170 into law, amending the Millville Dallas Airmotive Plant Job Loss Notification Act, New Jersey’s mini-WARN Act (NJ WARN Act), in several significant ways and further deviating from the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (federal WARN Act). The amended NJ WARN Act is set to take effect on July 19, 2020.
Uncertainty Remains for Texas Paid Sick Leave Ordinances
Over the past two years, city councils in three of the four largest cities in Texas — Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas — each have passed ordinances requiring local employers to provide their employees with paid sick leave. In each instance, the new proposed ordinance was met with fierce resistance from local businesses, staffing agencies and professional associations. Those aligned against the ordinances promised that their adoption would be followed swiftly by lawsuits. What’s more, the opposition was supported by none other than Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who took a hardline stance that such ordinances violate the Texas Minimum Wage Act. The purpose of the Minimum Wage Act, Paxton argued, was to set a uniform statewide policy with respect to wage requirements that municipal governments had no right to circumvent. Despite all of this pushback, the city council in each city overwhelmingly voted to adopt the ordinance.
The ordinances in all three cities are similar and contain some of the same key features but each also has its own distinguishing characteristics:
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Labor Law Update: Your Labor of Love
*Originally published by CalCPA in the January/February 2020 issue of California CPA.
More than 300 bills introduced in the 2019 California Legislative session mention “employer,” compared to 589 bills in 2018. While most bills bogged down or died in the Legislature, many of the bills—which likely would have been vetoed by former Gov. Jerry Brown—were signed into law by first-term Gov. Gavin Newsom, ushering in a new wave of more regulation of employers in the Golden State.
The following are essential elements of many key state Assembly Bills (AB) and Senate Bills (SB) that became law Jan. 1 (unless otherwise noted) and affect private employers.