Labor & Employment Law Update

In September 2018, the U.S. DOL published “updated” FMLA forms and the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published updated FCRA forms.

DOL – Family and Medical Leave Act Forms

The DOL’s September 4, 2018 update is trivial: only the expiration date changed (now extended to August 31, 2021). There are no other changes to information, questions, or even layout (indeed, they maintain their prior revision date). Nonetheless, employers should promptly update their files with these new template forms. 

The forms are all available from the DOL’s  Wage and Hour ...

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is taking more steps towards positive, significant change for private-sector employers:

Joint Employer Standard

CURRENT LAW:  The Board may find that two or more entities are “joint employers of a single work force if they are both employers within the meaning of the common law, and if they share or codetermine those matters governing the essential terms and conditions of employment.”  Browning-Ferris Industries of California, Inc., 362 NLRB No. 186 (2015). The primary inquiry is whether the purported joint-employer possesses ...

We’ve all heard Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes’s defense to a failed drug screen for opium: she eats a poppy seed muffin every day. With Coca-Cola recently announcing that it was exploring a cannabidiol-infused beverage line, companies should again buckle-up for the next wave of employment-based substance screening.

Is the Benes Defense valid? Could a poppy seed muffin a day actually result in a false-positive?

Maybe. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services occasionally changes the cutoff levels for initial and confirmatory testing thresholds for ...

Illinois employers should be aware of amendments to the Illinois Nursing Mothers in the Workplace Act that expand the rights of employees who need to express milk while they are at work. Both before and after the amendments, the Act requires employers to provide a private space, other than a toilet stall, for mothers to pump at work. The amendments, which went into effect immediately when Governor Bruce Rauner signed House Bill 1595 on August 21, 2018, make some key changes to the law, each discussed below:

• Employers cannot require employees to pump during their break time. Formerly ...

The future of Illinois’ mandatory retirement savings program, Illinois Secure Choice, is up in the air after Governor Bruce Rauner issued an amendatory veto to change the word “shall” to “may” in key passages of the law, making the program optional, instead of mandatory.  The program is scheduled to roll-out in a series of “waves” starting this November.

The Illinois Secure Choice Savings Act (Secure Choice Act), enacted in 2015, requires private employers with more than 25 employees that have been operating in Illinois for at least two years to participate in the ...

If you are an employer with employees or independent contractors in Massachusetts, it is about to get much more burdensome to protect your customer contacts and trade secrets. In sweeping legislation affecting all employers with employees or independent contractors in the Commonwealth, Massachusetts has altered the meaning, validity and enforceability of non-competition agreements.

The new law, which goes into effect October 1, 2018, requires that any non-competition agreement affecting employees or independent contractors in Massachusetts meet eight minimum ...