The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2024-1, entitled “Artificial Intelligence and Automated Systems in the Workplace under the Fair Labor Standards Act and Other Federal Labor Standards.” The bulletin originated from an October 2023 executive order that called for a coordinated federal government approach to the responsible and safe Read More

In response to the final rule that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued implementing the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA), seventeen state attorneys general have filed suit to challenge the rule’s abortion provisions. These states include Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Read More

The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has issued its updated final rule on overtime pay. Originally proposed by the WHD in September 2023, the Defining and Delimiting the Exemptions for Executive, Administrative, Professional (EAP), Outside Sales and Computer Employees will go into effect on July 1, 2024. However, some portions of the rule will not go into effect until January 1, Read More

The state of New York has included paid prenatal leave as part of its $237 state budget for fiscal year 2025. Under the state’s paid prenatal leave policy, which is the first of its kind in the nation, pregnant employees will be entitled to up to 20 hours of paid leave to attend prenatal doctors’ appointments. Gov. Kathy Hochul first proposed a paid prenatal leave policy in January, noting statistics from the Read More

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