Rojgar Job News

Last week I talked about the new state law regarding pregnancy discrimination that is going into effect on October 1, 2017.  In that post, I mentioned a new notice that was required to comply with the law. Although there is no set form that is required to be used, the Connecticut Department of Labor has created one that is available for employers to use that will comply with the state law.  It is free to download here.   Because the content is useful, I’m using it down below so that employers can cut and paste it into a handbook or into a notice to be given to employee upon starting work too.  One can quibble with some of the word phrasings that are used, but overall — and stating the obvious — if you use this, you’ll be in comp liance according to the state. Covered Employers Each employer with more than 3 employees must comply with these anti-discrimination and reasonable accommodation laws related to an employee or job applicant’...

Sometimes, government is thought of as the enforcer of rules.  But sometimes, the government is also in the business of helping businesses too. The latest example of this is an Employer Resource Guide put out a few weeks ago by the Connecticut Department of Labor. You can download it directly here.   According to its introduction: This employer resource guide was created to educate all employers on the wide array of programs, services, and incentives available in Connecticut. This guide will be  periodically updated, and automatically emailed to all registered employers in CTHires, ( www.cthires.com), the Department of Labor’s no cost online job bank. In addition, a link to the resource guide will be available on the Department of Labor’s website, http://www.ctdol.state.ct.us/employerresourceguide.pdf. For some larger employers, much of the information contained here may not be news. But for others, there are programs that the government runs that ma...

Cars. Lots of really fancy cars. That about sums up my Sunday in which I went to the Concorso Ferrari & Friends car event in West Hartford Center.  It has one of the biggest collections of ultra-expensive cars in the state — all to benefit the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. What I wouldn’t do to commute in the Pagani supercar! (Anyone have an extra $3 million lying around?) Now, the odds on you commuting in a supercar and wondering if you’re getting paid by your employer are probably about the same as winning Powerball, but it’s still worth asking the question: Why don’t you get paid for commuting to work? The answer lies in the law and something called the Portal-to-Portal Act.  The Act states that employers are not required to pay for the time employees spend on activities occurring before or after (“preliminary or postliminary”) they perform the principal activities for which they are employed. Thus, compensab...

Update: Governor Lamont vetoed this bill on July 12, 2019.   Bear with me because this is a story about how a little provision slipped in at the last minute and buried deep in a innocuously-titled bill will have big implications for the restaurant industry in Connecticut. You might have missed House Bill 5001 (now Public Act 19-198) titled “AN ACT ESTABLISHING A TASK FORCE TO STUDY WORKFORCE TRAINING NEEDS IN THE STATE.” There was no legal analysis of the bill by the the Office of Legislative Research because “it does not analyze Special Acts.”  This must just be a bill about a task force, right? Well not exactly. Through an amendment that was adopted and passed by the House unanimously at 7:07p on the last day of the General Assembly session, two little noticed sections — Section 5 and 7 — were added to this bill.  Three hours later, the Senate also passed it unanimously. These provisions don’t have anything to do with a stu...

It’s been a long while since this blog went into the toilet.  But in this Employment Law Checklist Project, there are two employment laws we need to tackle together that highlight the very specific nature of some laws and how they remain on the books. Yes, I’m talking about the two employment laws that require toilets in two industries. The first of these is Conn. Gen. Stat. Sec. 31-36. It provides that: The commissioner shall have authority by order to that effect to require the proprietor of any foundry in which ten or more persons are employed, situated in a locality where there is such system for the disposal of sewage as to make such order practicable, to provide for the use of such employees a toilet room of such suitable dimensions as said commissioner determines, containing washbowls or sinks connected with running water, with facilities for heating the same, such room to be directly connected with such foundry building, properly heated, ventilated and protected...

A hearing is set for Thursday on draft legislation to “fix” a bill that had been earlier vetoed and that I discussed in a post earlier this week.  CTNewsJunkie.com was first to report on the details earlier Wednesday. The bill comes at an interesting crossroads in restaurant wage/hour law. Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Labor released proposed guidance that would give restaurants far greater latitude in deciding on tip pools and the application of the tip credit. Indeed, the proposed federal regulation would permit a tip credit to be taken  regardless of the percentage of servers’ time that’s spent on so-called “non-service” duties, provided this side work is done during, just before, or a reasonable time after regular “service” time. The proposed Connecticut bill can be found here and would require the CTDOL to write regulations that employers can then, in good faith, rely upon. The bill would also try to limit ...

So a few months ago, I got a call from a CTDOL employee asking if I knew about a certain bill that had passed the legislature. I was still reviewing the bills but decided to take a deeper look. As it turned out, a deal had been struck to insert language in the last few hours into an otherwise procedural bill that gave restaurants some needed protection from very costly wage & hour lawsuits that have been filed.  And I posted about it. I reached out to a few people before clicking publish but was told to go ahead — nothing to worry about or “see”. Except, of course, there was plenty to see because this was a bill that no one was supposed to see before it was signed by the Governor. Eeek. I later discovered that the Governor’s office had not been involved in the deal and my blog post was news to the them.  I even got a call from another attorney representing a restaurant who wanted me to take my blog post down. (Which is, of course, kinda crazy since ...

As the decade comes to a close, a time traveler from 2009 might be surprised to see how rapidly laws on marijuana have changed.  Last night’s Democratic Debate even featured a heated discussion about legalizing marijuana. But let’s imagine that this traveler is from Human Resources. The laws regarding medical marijuana are head-spinning; these laws have resulted in a significant impact in the areas of drug testing, hiring, discipline and ADA accommodations. Now add the fact that a neighboring state – Massachusetts – has legalized pot and, well, no wonder HR professionals are just trying to play catch up. Oh, and will Connecticut join Massachusetts in 2020 and legalize pot? I’ll try to make sense of all of this at an upcoming breakfast sponsored by the Western CT chapter of SHRM. The breakfast is set for December 11, 2019 at 8 a.m. at the Hampton Inn in Danbury.  I’ve even been promised a hot breakfast. In the interim, I recently came ac...