The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently issued final regulations for implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA). The final regulations come following a 60-day public comment period in which the agency fielded more than 100,000 public comments. The PWFA went into effect on June 27, 2023. The PWFA requires employers with fifteen or more employees to provide reasonable Read More

Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-RI) and three other representatives have proposed the Protected Time Off Act (“the PTO Act”), a bill that would require businesses to provide employees with one hour of annual leave for every 25 hours of work. Under the bill, workers could earn up to ten paid vacation days per year, expanding this benefit to an estimated twenty-seven million people with no paid vacation time. Sen. Bernie Read More

President Joe Biden focused on work-related initiatives in his third State of the Union speech. He proposed raising $500 billion over the next decade by establishing a minimum 25% income tax on billionaires and a minimum corporate tax of 21%. The current average federal income tax rate for America’s 1,000 billionaires is 8.2%, far less than what most people pay, including teachers, nurses, and other middle-class Read More

According to a recent announcement by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), its Wage and Hour Division recently recovered $119,000 in unpaid wages, damages, and penalties for 43 workers at a Hawaii construction company. After an investigation, the DOL found that H.K. Construction, a residential construction company on Oahu, recklessly disregarded the requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). The company also Read More

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently denied a challenge to the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) “successor bar” rule filed by a Puerto Rico hospital. The successor bar rule requires employers that acquire companies with organized workers to bargain with the union for a certain period following the acquisition. The NLRB had previously ruled that the Puerto Rico hospital violated the Read More

California law requires all private employers with 100 or more employees and/or 100 or more workers hired through labor contractors to submit annual information to the state on worker pay and demographics. Companies must comply with this state law even if they have one employee in California and the rest live in another state, so long as they have 100 or more employees and/or contracted workers. The deadline for Read More

America First Legal (AFL) has filed a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), as well as with NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, about the NFL’s so-called “Rooney Rule.” Under the Rooney Rule, the NFL must interview at least two external candidates from underrepresented minorities for top position vacancies, including head coaching positions. AFL claims that the Rule violates the Civil Read More

Research by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) in 2023 shows that paid maternity and paternity leave increased by five percent last year, with 32% of employers now offering paid paternity leave. Furthermore, although many men have not taken paternity leave in the past, even if it was available, an increasing number of men are taking advantage of available parental leave time. More employers also are Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that whistleblowers need not prove that their employer acted with retaliatory intent to maintain their retaliation claims under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). Although whistleblowers are required to prove that the protected activity was a contributing factor in the unfavorable employment action that their employer took against them, evidence of retaliatory intent is unnecessary Read More

The Georgia General Assembly has passed HB 982, which would require the State Workforce Development Board to develop, approve, and publish an annual list of high-demand careers. This list would contain those careers that are most critical to the state’s current and future workforce needs. The bill has gone to Governor Brian P. Kemp for his signature. The bill directs that the State Workforce Development Board Read More