Tagged: Compensation

What Employers Should Know About Biden’s AI Executive Order

On October 30, 2023, President Biden issued an Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The sweeping Executive Order sets out standards for safe and secure uses of AI with an emphasis on privacy protections, the promotion of innovation and competition, avoiding discrimination and bias, and supporting workers. The Executive Order requires principles and best practices to be established by the Secretary of Labor within 180 days of the Executive Order. The principles and best practices will provide guidance for employers to “mitigate AI’s potential harms to employees’ well-being and maximize its potential benefits.” The principles and best practices must address the following, • job-displacement risks and career opportunities related to AI, including effects on job skills and evaluation of applicants and workers • labor standards and job quality, including issues related to the equity, protected activity, compensation, health, and safety implications of AI in the workplace • implications for workers of employers’ AI-related collection and use of data about them, including transparency, engagement, management, and activity protected under worker-protection laws Agencies will likely adopt the Secretary of Labor’s guidelines, as appropriate and consistent with applicable laws. We can also expect guidance on AI workforce development, as well as employee monitoring, which would ensure that workers whose...

Pay Equity Compliance Front and Center in New Jersey Department of Labor’s Proposed Regulations for the Temporary Workers Bill of Rights

The New Jersey Department of Labor recently issued proposed regulations for the Temporary Workers Bill of Rights (TWBR). The proposed regulations include new definitions and further guidance for employers to comply with TWBR’s pay equity requirements. The proposed regulations are open for public comment until October 20, 2023. By way of background, the TWBR, which became fully effective on August 5, 2023, seeks to protect more than 127,000 temporary workers working in the state and employed through a temporary help service firm in designated occupations, including protective services; food preparation and serving; building and grounds cleaning and maintenance; personal service and care; construction labor, helpers, and trades; installation, maintenance, and repair; production; and transportation and material moving. The TWBR, among other things, implements detailed wage notice requirements to be provided to temporary workers in both English and the temporary worker’s primary language, recordkeeping requirements, advanced notice for changes to temporary worker schedules, pay equity, and anti-retaliation rights with a rebuttable presumption for any disciplinary action taken within 90 days of a temporary worker’s exercise of those rights. The goal of the TWBR is to strengthen employment protections for temporary workers in these designated occupations, and employers need to be mindful of the TWBR’s requirements for compliance purposes. The TWBR’s pay equity component requires temporary workers...

New York City Pay Transparency: What Employers Need to Know

Effective November 1, 2022, covered employers in New York City must comply with new legislation concerning pay transparency. Specifically, the New York City Pay Transparency Law (“Pay Transparency Law” or “Law”) amends the New York City Human Rights Law (NYCHRL) by requiring employers to include minimum and maximum base salaries and wages for a position when advertising or posting a job, promotion, or transfer opportunity. We discuss the new law and guidance issued by the New York City Commission on Human Rights (“Commission”) below. New York City joins a number of other jurisdictions that have passed some form of a pay transparency law, including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maryland, Nevada, Rhode Island, and Washington. Who Are “Covered Employers?” The Pay Transparency Law applies to all New York City employers with at least four employees (which includes owners and individual employers). For counting purposes, all four employees need not work in New York City or in the same location. Instead, a particular workplace is covered so long as one of the employees works in the city. Employment agencies are also covered by the Law regardless of size, but the Law excepts temporary help firms seeking applicants to join their pool of available workers. What the Pay Transparency Law Requires Any advertisement for a job, promotion, or transfer...

FFCRA Benefits Become Optional and Unemployment Benefits Change With New Stimulus Package

On December 27, 2020, President Donald Trump signed the fourth major COVID-19 response bill into law. The stimulus package includes focused relief in a variety of areas (see our December 21, 2020 post), but two important elements are worth highlighting for employers. First, there have been several changes to pandemic-related unemployment insurance benefits since guidelines were first provided last spring. Second, the emergency paid sick leave and expanded family and medical leave benefits provided under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), explained here, expired on December 31, 2020 and were not extended, but employers who opt to offer them remain eligible for tax credits. Unemployment Insurance (UI) Benefits Supplement and Extension The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”) provided eligible recipients of state unemployment benefits with an additional $600 per week in federal benefits, which expired in July 2020. The new stimulus package provides eligible individuals who are already collecting state-provided unemployment benefits with an additional $300 per week in federal benefits ($300 less than the last stimulus relief package) for up to 11 weeks through March 14, 2021. These payments, however, are not retroactive to July 2020. The new stimulus package also extends the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) programs. PUA provides benefits to individuals...

The U.S. DOL Issues Updated Guidance on CARES Act Unemployment Programs

Since our March 28, 2020 post, “Phase Three COVID-19 Response Bill Now Law: What it Means for Businesses and Employees,” the United States Department of Labor (DOL) has issued three additional Unemployment Insurance Program Letters (UIPL), No. 15-20, No. 16-20, and No. 17-20, to provide additional guidance to states on the administration of the three unemployment insurance programs available under the CARES Act. UIPL No. 15-20 UIPL No. 15-20, issued on April 4, 2020, addresses Section 2104 of the CARES Act—Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) benefits—which provides “eligible” individuals who are already collecting state-provided unemployment benefits an additional $600 per week in federal benefits through July 31, 2020. Who is eligible for the additional $600 FPUC payments? Individuals collecting regular unemployment compensation under state programs, Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC), Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), Extended Benefits (EB), Short-Time Compensation (STC), Trade Readjustment Allowances (TRA), Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA), and Payments under the Self-Employment Assistance (SEA) program. FPUC is not available, however, for those receiving “additional benefits” (referred to as “extended benefits” by state UC programs) that extend the duration of benefits during high unemployment to those in approved training programs who have exhausted benefits, or for several other reasons. Individuals must be eligible for and receiving benefits under the above programs in order to be...

New Jersey Division on Civil Rights Issues Guidance on the Diane B. Allen Equal Pay Act

On March 2, 2020, the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights (“DCR”) issued a Guidance Memorandum on the Diane B. Allen Equal Pay Act (“the Act”), which took effect in July 2018 and is widely considered to be one of the most employee-protective equal pay laws in the nation. In a statement made on the day of the Guidance Memorandum’s (“guidelines”) release, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy reaffirmed his administration’s intention to eliminate discriminatory pay practices throughout the State that have historically prevented women and other minority groups from earning equal pay. The guidelines include a legal overview, with specific attention paid to the Act’s changes to the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (“LAD”), and provide answers to Frequently Asked Questions (“FAQs”). The first section of the guidelines offer an overview of the Act’s main provisions and provide details on how the Act modifies the LAD. As a refresher, the overview outlines the DCR’s position as to the five most important provisions of the Act: Expanded Remedies for Pay Discrimination: The Act amended the LAD to implement a six-year “lookback” period which allows employees who prove pay discrimination to recover up to six years of back pay if the discrimination was continuous and a violation occurred within the LAD’s two-year statute of limitations. The Act...

2019 Rings in Further Protections for Delaware and Philadelphia Employees

Before 2018 wrapped up, the year of the #MeToo movement, the Delaware and Philadelphia legislatures worked to ensure the passage of employee-friendly legislation. While Delaware’s new law focuses on sexual harassment,  Philadelphia has turned its focus on the work schedules for those employed in service industries. Delaware, like many other states in 2018, passed legislation to strengthen workplace harassment laws. The legislation was signed into law in August 2018, and went into effect on January 1, 2019. Delaware’s Discrimination in Employment Act has now been amended to include provisions specifically dedicated to sexual harassment that apply to employers with at least four employees in the state. It should be noted that Delaware’s law includes unpaid interns, applicants, joint employees and apprentices within its definition of employee. In addition to defining sexual harassment, the law provides that employers will be liable for sexual harassment if: (1) A supervisor’s sexual harassment results in a negative employment action of an employee; (2) The employer knew or should have known of a non-supervisory employee’s sexual harassment of an employee and failed to take appropriate corrective measures; or (3) A negative employment action is taken against an employee in retaliation for the employee filing a discrimination charge, participating in an investigation of sexual harassment, or testifying in any proceeding or...

New Fair Credit Reporting Act – Summary of Rights Forms

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB”), the Federal agency that administers the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), just issued new Summary of Rights forms. An employer conducting a background check on an employee or applicant through a consumer reporting agency must provide such employee or applicant a Summary of Rights notice when first obtaining consent to conduct the background check — together with a written disclosure about the use of the background check — and when taking adverse action based on the background check. Starting today, September 21, 2018, the new Summary of Rights form must be used. The CFPB also issued forms called Summary of Consumer Identity Theft Rights that must be provided to consumers by credit reporting agencies when the subject of an identity theft. A new law also requires credit reporting agencies to implement a “national security freeze” at no cost to a consumer that restricts prospective lenders from access to a consumer’s credit report. Other changes include a one year (instead of 90 days) notification of a fraud alert in a consumer’s file. The notification informs a lender that the consumer may have been the victim of identity theft, for which the lender must take additional steps to verify the identity of anyone attempting to obtain credit in the consumer’s name....

New York Employers Fall Review

In 2018, employers in New York encountered several important changes, including in the areas of anti-harassment and scheduling, warranting a Fall review of current employment practices and preparation for next year’s developments. Employers should take the time now to review current practices and prepare for the imminent future. NEW YORK CITY’S TEMPORARY SCHEDULE CHANGE LAW New York City’s Temporary Schedule Change Law (“TSC Law”) became effective July 18, 2018, and requires private employers to provide eligible employees with an allowance of a “temporary change” to their usual work schedule for certain qualifying “personal events” for up to two occasions per year (i.e., one business day twice per year or two business days on one occasion). Eligible employees are those who work at least 80 hours a year in New York City and have been employed by their employer for 120 or more days, with limited exceptions, including employees covered by collective bargaining agreements waiving the law. Temporary schedule changes may include paid time off, use of short-term unpaid leave, permission to work remotely, or working hour swaps or shifts. Qualifying “personal events” include: (a) an employee’s need to: (i) care for a minor child or care recipient (i.e., a person with a disability who is a family or household member and relies on the employee...

NYC Paid Sick/Safe Time Law Expands

New York City’s Sick Leave Law was expanded on May 5, 2018, to include additional reasons for eligible employees to use NYC paid sick leave (called “safe leave”) including: to obtain services from a domestic violence shelter, rape crisis center, or other shelter or services program for relief from a family offense matter, sexual offense, stalking, or human trafficking; to participate in safety planning, temporarily or permanently relocate, or take other actions to increase the safety of the employee or employee’s family members from future family offense matters, sexual offenses, stalking, or human trafficking; to meet with a civil attorney or other social service provider to obtain information and advice on, and prepare for or participate in any criminal or civil proceeding, including but not limited to, matters related to a family offense matter, sexual offense, stalking, human trafficking, custody, visitation, matrimonial issues, orders of protection, immigration, housing, discrimination in employment, housing or consumer credit; to file a complaint or domestic incident report with law enforcement; to meet with a district attorney’s office; to enroll children in a new school; or to take other actions necessary to maintain, improve, or restore the physical, psychological, or economic health or safety of the employee or the employee’s family member or to protect those who associate or work...