On January 26, 2023, OSHA issued two enforcement memoranda accompanied by a clear message to employers from Assistant Secretary for OSHA Doug Parker: employers who “choose to put profits before their employees’ safety, health and wellbeing” will be targeted. Aggressively.
OSHA’s first memorandum revises and significantly expands its seldom used instance-by-instance (“IBI”) policy. The decision
On November 22, 2022, a Virginia Walmart employee reportedly opened fire in a staff break room, killing six co-workers and injuring several others. On January 23, 2023, a California mushroom farm employee shot and killed seven people at two locations, one of which was his place of employment. These tragedies are just two examples of
As part of its $1.7 trillion end-of-year spending bill, Congress passed two laws that provide new rights and protections for pregnant workers and nursing mothers – the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) and the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act (PUMP Act). Summaries of each law are provided below.
PWFA
Modeled after the
In March of 2020, the National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB” or “the Board”) finalized a rule that substantially overhauled certain parts of NLRB election procedures thereby providing additional protections to the rights of workers with respect to their ability to choose whether or not they wanted to be represented by a union.
More specifically, in
The Department of Justice has claimed its first victory in attacking “no-poach” agreements after a Nevada staffing company pled guilty and was sentenced to pay $134,000. The case arose out of a concerted effort by the Federal Trade Commission and DOJ, first announced in 2016, to target companies who enter into agreements with competitors to
Employers should be preparing to take a close look at the current status of individuals they classify as independent contractors – especially those in the Construction industry.
On October 13, 2022, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) will publish a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to help employers and workers determine whether a worker is an employee
On October 3, 2022, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that employers must continue deducting union dues from employees’ paychecks, pursuant to their labor contracts, even after the contracts expire. The case is Valley Hospital Medical Center, Inc., N.L.R.B. Case 28-CA-213783 (Valley Hospital II).
Dues checkoff previously served as an exception to
It can be a disheartening fact of life for employers that, even when they do everything right and follow all applicable safety rules and regulations to the letter, employee injuries can still happen. It is also often frustrating that those injuries, even in the absence of any wrongdoing by the employer, will result in workers’
According to recent reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women make up roughly 10% of jobs in the construction industry, 30% in manufacturing, and as of 2021, and 75% of healthcare and social assistance jobs.[1] Although those numbers may have dropped during the COVID-19 pandemic, women are beginning to return to the workforce
The Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in a dramatic increase in the number of employees who work remotely. According to Forbes, pre-pandemic, roughly five percent of full-time employees with office jobs worked primarily from home. According to projections, twenty- five percent of all professional jobs will be remote by the end of 2022. As such, employees