Rojgar Job News

Over the weekend, the General Assembly approved a bill prohibiting employers, including the state and its political subdivisions, from asking, or directing a third-party to ask, about a prospective employee’s wage and salary history. I have previously discussed the measure here.  There were a few versions floating around and it was House Bill 5386 that carried the day (as amended). The prohibition does not apply in two situations: if the prospective employee voluntarily discloses his or her wage and salary history, or; to any actions taken by an employer, employment agency, or its employees or agents under a federal or state law that specifically authorizes the disclosure or verification of salary history for employment purposes. While salary may not be inquired, the bill DOES allow an employer to ask about the other elements of a prospective employee’s compensation structure (e.g., stock options), but the employer may not ask about their value. The bill has a two ...

As if the pandemic weren’t disorienting enough, the rules and guidance surrounding unemployment compensation feels as if it keeps changing too. While that’s not entirely accurate — Connecticut’s rules are basically unchanged though some of the application of those rules have been tweaked — the new CARES Act has added a layer of complexity that we are only now beginning to sort out. Add to that new guidance released Saturday evening (here) and even more new guidance released by the Department of Labor on Sunday evening, and that’s when things have gotten messy. I can’t recap everything in a single blog post but my partner Peter Murphy has some additional guidance on this issue as well in a post today.   For Connecticut employers, your first resource  must be the CTDOL FAQ that I’ve highlighted before.   For unemployment related to layoffs and terminations,  the rules are still relatively straightforward....

Employers are relieved! One of the most talked-about provisions of the Macron ordinances has been confirmed as valid by the French Court of Cassation (Supreme Court). The cap on compensation for unfair dismissal, which was contested by several industrial tribunals, was confirmed as consistent with international texts ratified by France. Since the ordinances reforming the Labour Code at the end of 2017, the cap has been set between one and twenty months’ gross salary, depending on seniority. Previously, judges were free to set the amounts which made tribunal litigation an uncertain business for both employers and employees. The “new” rules, now confirmed as binding, allow both sides a much greater ability to assess the commercial merits of particular causes of action and settlement offers made or received. There was also a six-month salary minimum for employees with more than two years’ service in a company with more than ten employees which has now been discontin...

This Autumn brings quite a few changes for Polish employers. Not only do new pension plans called PPK ( Pracownicze Plany Kapitałowe ) became a reality for the biggest Polish employers in the fourth quarter of 2019, but the Labour Code and Code of Civil Procedure see changes too. Some of them result in a need to change workplace policies and procedures, while others increase operational costs. Employee Capital Plans (PPK) Employee Capital Plans were launched this year to “allow” (require, actually) employees to systematically contribute to a pensions savings scheme. PPK apply from July 1 to employers having at least 250 employees as at December 31, 2018. From January 1 next year they will also cover employers with at least 50 employees as at June 30, 2019 and as of July 1 2020 to those with at least 20 employees as at the end of 2019. The remaining employers will be covered by the PPK regulations from January 1, 2021. The system provides for the automatic enrollment for...

AB 5, and its “ABC test,” expected to have greatest impact in “gig economy” jobs, but impact certain to be even more widely felt After a summer of lobbying and debating, the California Assembly adopted AB 5, a headline-grabbing law purporting to transform the status of gig-economy workers at companies like Uber, Lyft, and DoorDash.  Proponents of the law assert that it will force those companies to treat those persons performing work as independent contractors like employees, with all of the legal protections that entails – minimum wage, overtime, workers’ compensation, paid sick leave and reimbursement of expenses just to name several.  Critics at companies like Uber are publicly declaring they do not believe it will change their relationship with gig workers while they are reportedly meeting behind closed doors with California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has stated he is still open to negotiating possible changes to the law before he signs ...

The list of states and cities implementing prohibitions on employer salary history inquiries continues to grow. On June 10, 2019, Alabama enacted the Clarke-Figures Equal Pay Act (“CFEPA”), the state’s first pay equity law. The CFEPA prohibits an employer from refusing to interview, hire, promote, or employ an applicant for employment, or retaliate against an applicant for employment because the applicant refuses to disclose their wage history. Wage history is defined in the CFEPA as “the wages paid to an applicant for employment by the applicant’s current or former employer.” The CFEPA took effect on September 1, 2019. On July 31, 2019, Illinois’ governor signed into law House Bill 834, amending the Illinois Equal Pay Act of 2003. This law prohibits employers from screening job applicants based on their current or prior salary and from requesting or requiring that applicants disclose information about their salary history as a condition of be...

On September 24, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) announced its long-awaited final overtime rule. Under the current DOL rules implementing the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), to be exempt from overtime pay under the “white collar” exemptions (e.g., executive, administrative, professional), an employee generally must be paid a predetermined, fixed, non-fluctuating salary of $455/week. However, as we reported on March 7, earlier this spring, the DOL proposed a rule to raise the FLSA salary threshold. After thousands of public comments on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the DOL announced on September 24 that it will increase the FLSA salary threshold even further than the DOL had proposed earlier this year, to $684/week, or the equivalent of $35,568/year. The methodology the DOL used to determine the salary threshold is similar to that it used in 2004 when the threshold was last updated, tying the salary level to the 20th percentile of ea...

Here is a mildly disconcerting decision issued by the Employment Appeal Tribunal about the calculation of compensation for injury to feelings in discrimination cases. Mr Komeng was found by the ET to have been serially and directly discriminated against by his employer, Creative Support Limited, in relation to opportunities for personal and professional development and the obligation to work at weekends. Despite this, he had soldiered on and remained employed by CSL up to and through the ET and EAT hearings. Mr Komeng’s injury to feelings was assessed by the ET as at the top of the lowest Vento band, which by the terms of that case is reserved for “ less serious cases, such as where the act of discrimination is an isolated or one-off occurrence “. That was worth £8,400 at the time, though interest and inflation lifted this to a little shy of £13,000. Komeng appealed – how could a number of years’ direct discrimination against him (so h...

On October 29, 2019, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered that the EEOC must continue to take all steps necessary to complete EEO-1 Component 2 data collection for calendar years 2017 and 2018.  As we recently discussed here, the EEOC filed a motion on October 8, 2019 asking the court to issue an order deeming the Component 2 data collection “complete.”  The court denied the EEOC’s request and ordered the agency to keep collecting pay data until January 31, 2020.  The court relied on its own April 25, 2019 Order, which states that the pay data collection will not be deemed complete “until the percentage of EEO-1 reporters that have submitted their required EEO-1 Component 2 reports equals or exceeds the mean percentage of EEO-1 reporters that actually submitted EEO-1 reports in each of the past four reporting years.”   The parties disagreed about how to calculate the mean percentage, but the court determined ...

As we most recently reported here and here, as of September 30, 2019, employers with 100 or more employees  (and federal contractors with 50 or more employees) were required to report to the federal government pay data for 2017 and 2018 for their workforce (known as “Component 2” data), broken down by race/ethnicity, sex, and job category.  However, consistent with its current practice regarding submission of Component 1 data – which consists of a listing of employees’ job category, sex, race, and ethnicity – the EEOC has agreed to continue collecting Component 2 data for a six-week period after the September 30, 2019 deadline, ending on November 11, 2019.  The pay data collection process has been the subject of ongoing litigation in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  In April 2019, it issued an order approving the September 30, 2019 deadline and requiring the EEOC to file status reports every 21 days explaining ...

Rule establishes standard under which two employers will be deemed jointly and severally liable under the Fair Labor Standards Act as of March 16, 2020 In January 2016, we posted about an Administrator’s Interpretation issued by the US Department of Labor’s (DOL) then-Wage and Hour Division Administrator that provided guidance for when two or more employers should be considered “joint employers” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  (The FLSA is the primary federal statute that regulates minimum wage and overtime compensation for US workers.)  This guidance noted the “growing variety and number of business models and labor arrangements,” and suggested that because of this, more direction was needed “to hold all responsible parties accountable for their legal obligations.” Now, four years later, the DOL has issued its Final Rule on Joint Employer Status under the FLSA.  The rule specifically addresses two types of poten...

Philadelphia’s Salary History Ban Upheld On February 6, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled in favor of the City of Philadelphia, upholding the constitutionality of the City’s Wage Equity Ordinance under the First Amendment. The City may now enforce the Ordinance and prohibit employers from asking applicants about their salary history. As one of the first jurisdictions to enact such a law, Mayor Kenney signed the Ordinance into law on January 23, 2017. The Ordinance made it unlawful for any business that employs individuals in the City of Philadelphia to ask applicants about their wage history (“Inquiry Provision”) or to rely on an applicants’ wage history to determine wages for the job for which the applicant applied (“Reliance Provision”). After the Ordinance was passed, the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia sued the City in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, contending the Ordi...

On March 25, we reported that the US Department of Labor (DOL) had begun to release informal guidance regarding its interpretation of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), which requires that certain employers, including, among others, private employers with fewer than 500  employees, provide paid sick and paid family leave in certain circumstances resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.  On March 26, the DOL updated its frequently asked questions (FAQs) page to address additional open questions vexing employers subject to the FFCRA.  Some of the key updates are as follows. Date on which to measure the 500-employee threshold With many businesses implementing layoffs or furloughs, many employers questioned when the 500-employee threshold is measured. The FAQs clarify that the 500-employee test is measured on the day that any particular employee requests leave.  If on that date the employer employs 500 or more employees, the employee’s request for pa...

During the second half of March 2020, the US Congress passed three landmark pieces of legislation addressing the COVID-19 (a/k/a novel coronavirus) pandemic.  One of these was the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA).  Under this law, employers of fewer than 500 employees are required to provide eligible employees with up to 80 hours of paid sick leave benefits as well as up to 10 weeks of partially-paid family leave, in each case, when an eligible employee is unable to work or telework due to certain COVID-19 related reasons.  The FFCRA went into effect on April 1, 2020, and on that same date, the U.S. Department of Labor issued extensive regulations providing further detail on the benefits available and employer obligations under the FFCRA.  In this In-Depth Analysis, Squire Patton Boggs will be analyzing these regulations in a five-part series of blog posts. In this first post, we address employer coverage, including when employers will be considered jo...

Throughout this past week, we have provided a comprehensive analysis of the various provisions of the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), the first ever federal law requiring the payment of paid sick leave and paid family leave for various COVID-19-related reasons.  These daily updates include consideration of employer and employee coverage; qualifying reasons for leave; complicated issues in paying employees; and job restoration requirements under both the paid sick and paid family provisions of the FFCRA.  For your convenience, we have compiled each day’s analysis here, and Squire Patton Boggs partners Jill Kirila and Laura Lawless will be doing a fulsome review of these provisions—and well as discussing challenges employers face in implementing difficult employment decisions, such as reductions-in-force, hours reductions, and furloughs—in a webinar on Monday, April 13, 2020 at 1 p.m. Eastern/10 a.m. Pacific.  To register, please c...

Previous installments of our series analyzing in detail the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and the regulations interpreting that law issued by the US Department of Labor addressed the following issues: Part One – employee eligibility and employer coverage; Part Two – the coronavirus-specific circumstances why eligible employees may take paid leave; Part Three – the rules that apply to employees’ use of emergency paid sick leave and public health emergency paid family leave; and Part Four – how employers calculate the amount of pay to be provided as paid FFCRA leave. In this final installment, we close out our analysis of the FFCRA by discussing what happens at the end of FFCRA leave, including employee job restoration rights, and the protections in the law against discrimination and retaliation. Click here to download Part Five of the series.

The first three installments of our five-part series analyzing the US Department of Labor regulations interpreting the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) examined eligibility and coverage issues.  Part One looked at which employees are eligible to take, and which employers are required to provide, emergency paid sick leave and public health emergency paid family leave under the FFCRA.  Part Two addressed the coronavirus-specific reasons why an eligible employee may take job-protected paid sick leave or paid family leave.  Part Three analyzed the unique rules regarding how emergency paid sick leave and public health emergency paid family leave may be used. In this fourth installment, we consider how employers are to calculate the “regular rate of pay” in order to pay employees exercising paid leave rights under the FFCRA, a concept far easier in theory than in practice. Click here to download Part Four of the series.

The first two installments of our five-part in-depth analysis of the emergency paid sick leave and public health emergency paid family leave provisions of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) – see here and here – analyzed the statutory language and regulations governing employer coverage, employee eligibility, the circumstances under which employees can request leave under the FFCRA, and what documentation an employer can require to support those requests. In Part Three, we now look at how employees may use leave under the FFCRA, including how the paid leave provisions of the FFCRA coordinate with existing employer and state law paid leave policies, how the two types of FFCRA paid leave coordinate with each other, and an issue under the FFCRA that vexes employers under even under non-pandemic circumstances: when can leave be used intermittently? Click here to download Part Three of the series.

In the first part of our in-depth analysis of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) and its accompanying regulations, we addressed employer coverage and employee eligibility issues under the new law.   In the second installment of this series, we turn to looking at the coronavirus-specific reasons upon which an employee can obtain FFCRA leave, including a government quarantine order, the employee’s illness or seeking a medical diagnosis, the illness of a family member or other close relation, and caregiver and child care responsibilities.  We also examine the notice an employee must provide of the need for FFCRA leave, and what proof an employer can require an employee provide in order to support a request for leave under the FFCRA. Click here to download Part Two of the series.

Ordinances and Executive Orders require paid sick leave, provide additional protections for grocery, drug store, and food delivery employees, and mandatory face mask use Like many other US cities and counties, the City of Los Angeles – the second most populous city in the US and home to four million citizens – has taken decisive action in response to the multiple threats presented by the current COVID-19 (a/k/a novel coronavirus) pandemic.  Some of those actions require that employers in Los Angeles take immediate action.  In this post, we provide a summary of the new requirements, including which employers are covered by the requirements and those employees eligible for certain newly-created benefits. Supplemental Paid Sick Leave Ordinance In the wake of the passage of the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), the Los Angeles City Council passed a paid sick leave ordinance to require that large employers provide up to an additional eighty (80) h...