Seattle restaurants and retail employers may soon face significant restrictions on employee scheduling. The Seattle City Council is currently considering a proposed ordinance with the potential to impact hundreds of employers across the City. Following are the basics of the proposed legislation. What employers would be covered by the proposed ordinance? Retail employers and large … Continue Reading
As previously reported, OSHA’s latest revisions for covered employers will dramatically impact routine post-accident drug testing programs. The new rules are available for review here, but here’s what you need to know: OSHA Postponed Enforcement. OSHA just delayed the date on which it will begin enforcing these new requirements. OSHA’s memo postponing enforcement is available … Continue Reading
Oregon’s new minimum wage law, signed by Governor Brown on March 2, 2016, received a lot of press during the 2016 legislative session. This new law establishes a tiered system for determination of the minimum wage based on the location of the employer. The minimum wage will increase annually on July 1 of each year, … Continue Reading
The IRS issued key extensions to looming 2016 information reporting deadlines for applicable large employers. This relief applies only to the deadlines for reporting the coverage that employers offered in 2015: The deadline for providing employee statements is extended to March 31, 2016 (from February 1, 2016). The deadline for filing 1094-Cs and 1095-Cs with … Continue Reading
Oregon employers should all be aware that Oregon’s new Paid Sick Leave (PSL) law goes into effect on January 1, 2016. We originally reported on the the PSL law’s requirements in July of this year. Late yesterday, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries (BOLI) published its final rules implementing Oregon’s PSL law: download text … Continue Reading
Flu season is fast approaching, and this winter, Tacoma employers will join Seattle employers in being required to provide paid sick leave. On February 1, 2016, Tacoma’s new paid sick leave ordinance goes into effect. As we have blogged about before, Tacoma is just the latest of a number of state and local jurisdictions around … Continue Reading
The Ninth Circuit released a precedent-setting Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) decision yesterday, and it’s a big win for employers. The Court held that an employee who makes “serious and credible threats of violence toward his co-workers” is not a “qualified individual with a disability” and therefore cannot state a claim under the ADA or … Continue Reading
In a 3-2 decision published on Thursday, July 16, 2015, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) concluded that intentional discrimination against an employee based on their sexual orientation is sex discrimination- an act strictly prohibited under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is premised … Continue Reading
It’s been an active legislative session in Oregon this year regarding laws affecting the state’s employers. Hot on the heels of enacting laws relating to paid sick leave, noncompete agreements, and employee privacy on social media, Governor Kate Brown also recently signed into law House Bill 3025. That law will make it illegal for most employers to … Continue Reading
Governor Kate Brown signed into law the new Oregon Paid Sick Leave (“OPSL”) law enacted by the Legislature on June 12. The new law becomes effective January 1, 2016. Oregon is the fourth state to enact a state-wide paid sick leave law after Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California. The text of the OPSL is available here. … Continue Reading
Coming to a store or restaurant near you soon! Supervisors will get overtime! “Too many Americans are working long days for less pay than they deserve.” —President Obama on overtime pay http://t.co/Y4yThJ1K2g — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 30, 2015 To be exempt from minimum wage and overtime requirements, currently a worker must perform certain duties … Continue Reading
As we noted a while ago, Oregon recently joined the growing number of states that prohibit an employer from demanding access to an employee’s personal social media account. An Oregon employer may not require an employee or applicant to disclose her username, password, or “other means of authentication that provides access to a personal social … Continue Reading
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled today in a 6-0 decision that Colorado’s “lawful activities statute,” which provides protections to employees who engage in lawful off-duty conduct, only applies to conduct that is lawful under both state and federal law. The Court’s decision in Coats v. Dish Network, which can be accessed here, involved a quadriplegic … Continue Reading
On July 3, 2015, the San Francisco Retail Workers Bill of Rights becomes operative. This ordinance creates major changes for many companies doing business in San Francisco. Employers Affected The law applies to “formula retail” businesses with (a) 20 or more locations worldwide, and (b) 20 or more employees in San Francisco, as well as … Continue Reading
As we have previously reported here and here, the National Labor Relations Board’s (“NLRB”) new rules governing union representation elections go into effect today, April 14, 2015. Congress passed a resolution disapproving the new “quickie” or “ambush” rules, but President Obama vetoed it. While lawsuits have been filed in Texas and the District of Columbia … Continue Reading
Utah legislators made national headlines last night when they approved a bill providing antidiscrimination protections to LGBT employees coupled with protections for religious expression in the workplace. Titled the Utah Antidiscrimination and Religious Freedom Act (the “Act”), the bill received support from across Utah’s political spectrum, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the … Continue Reading
Allow us to pat ourselves on the back for a moment. Prognosticating from 2013 into the future, we accurately predicted that in 2014 the Seattle Seahawks would win the Super Bowl and that the public would continue to strongly support minimum wage increases and paid sick leave laws. (Please politely ignore our Portland Trailblazers NBA … Continue Reading
My colleague Bryan Hawkins recently discussed California’s new paid sick leave law with Colin O’Keefe of LXBN. You can catch the interview on the clip below. As Bryan noted in his original post, California is the second state in the nation (after Connecticut) to enact a state-wide law requiring most employers to provide paid sick leave to employees, marking the latest … Continue Reading
Dear World of Employment Blog readers. We’ve been blogging since 2008, and while our commitment to keep you informed on major employment law developments hasn’t changed, technology certainly has. Six years ago, it was still a desktop- and RSS-dominated world. Today, more and more of you are reading our posts on tablets and smartphones. As … Continue Reading
The IRS issued Notice 2013-45 recently, the official guidance document explaining the one-year delay in the implementation of the employer pay-or-play penalties under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”) health care reform. As announced in a Treasury blog, the IRS has delayed for one year the information reporting requirements (found in sections 6055 … Continue Reading
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued an interim final rule and request for comments regarding procedures for handling employee whistleblower complaints under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Section 1558. This part of the ACA added a new Section 18c to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which protects employees from retaliation for exercising certain … Continue Reading
Although it’s almost been four years since it was issued in January 2009, Executive Order 13495, known as “Nondisplacement of Qualified Workers Under Service Contracts” (74 Fed. Reg. 6103) has not had much impact upon government contracting employers. That is about to change as the final rule and regulations that will make Executive Order 13495 enforceable … Continue Reading
In response to two federal court cases we previously blogged about here and here, the NLRB has indefinitely postponed implementation of its notice posting rule pending appeals in both of those cases. The bottom line is that no employer needs to post the notice for the time being. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the … Continue Reading
