Workforce Bulletin

In a stinging rebuke of the Trump Administration’s attempt to remove burdensome regulations on employers, Judge Tanya Chutkan, a District Court judge in the District of Columbia this week reinstated the EEO-1 “Part 2” wage data/hours worked reporting form for all employers who file annual EEO-1 demographic reports with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") and the U.S. Department of Labor. (This includes all companies employing more than 100 people, or 50 people if they are a US federal contractor.)

This new data collection requirement, launched in 2016 by ...

Our colleague David M. Prager at Epstein Becker Green has a post on the Wage and Hour Defense Blog that will be of interest to our readers in the hospitality industry: “Overtime: DOL Proposes to Raise Salary Level for Overtime Exemption to $35,308.”

Following is an excerpt:

The U.S. Department of Labor has released a proposal to update the overtime rules under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act. Employers should be prepared to raise salaries to meet the minimum thresholds, pay overtime when appropriate, and otherwise adhere to the new rules if they go into effect.

Federal ...

On March 6, 2019, the 20-year business partnership between celebrity chef Mario Batali and the Bastianich family of restaurateurs, Batali & Bastianich Hospitality Group, was formally dissolved following allegations by several women more than a year ago that he sexually assaulted and harassed them at his restaurants years earlier. Tanya Bastianich Manueli and her brother Joe Bastianich have bought all of Mr. Batali’s shares in the restaurants. As a result, Mr. Batali has been fully divested and will no longer profit from his former restaurant group, and his name already has been ...

On March 1, 2019, the New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) announced that it is no longer pursuing predictive scheduling regulations (or “call-in pay”) that would have affected most employers in the state. For the time being, New York employers do not have to worry about pending statewide regulations regarding call-in pay. Keep in mind, however, that New York City employers are still subject to the Fair Workweek Law.

The proposed NYSDOL regulations would have required employers provide “call-in pay” ranging from two to four hours at the minimum wage in these ...

In the New Year, two states – New Jersey and Illinois – have proposed legislation requiring restaurants to adopt a sexual harassment training policy and provide anti-sexual harassment training to employees.  While it remains to be seen whether these bills will become law, attempts to target and reform working conditions in the hospitality industry are nonetheless noteworthy, particularly given that unlike New York and California, neither New Jersey nor Illinois have enacted broad legislation requiring private sector employers, regardless of occupation, to provide sexual ...

Our colleague Laura A. Stutz at Epstein Becker Green has a post on the Health Employment and Labor Blog that will be of interest to our readers in the retail industry: “Race Discrimination on the Basis of Hair Is Illegal in NYC.”

Following is an excerpt:

The New York City Commission on Human Rights published legal enforcement guidance defining an individual’s right to wear “natural hair, treated or untreated hairstyles such a locs, cornrows, twists, braids, Bantu knots, fades, Afros, and/or the right to keep hair in an uncut or untrimmed state.”   The guidance ...

Washington State is considering sweeping legislation (SB 5376) to govern the security and privacy of personal data similar to the requirements of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”). Under the proposed legislation, Washington residents will gain comprehensive rights in their personal data. Residents will have the right, subject to certain exceptions, to request that data errors be corrected, to withdraw consent to continued processing and to deletion of their data. Residents may require an organization to confirm whether it is processing ...

The New York City Commission on Human Rights (the “Commission”) has adopted new rules (“Rules”) which establish broad protections for transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals. The Rules, which define various terms related to gender identity and expression, re-enforce recent statutory changes to the definition of the term “gender,” and clarify the scope of protections afforded gender identity status under the New York City Human Rights Law. New York State also just added gender identity and expression as protected classifications under ...

Our colleague Kevin Sullivan at Epstein Becker Green has a post on the Wage and Hour Defense Blog that will be of interest to our readers in the retail industry: “California Court of Appeal Concludes That Certain Types of On-Call Scheduling Triggers Requirement to Pay Wages."

On February 4, 2019, a divided panel of the California Court of Appeal issued their majority and dissenting opinion in Ward v. Tilly’s, Inc. It appears to be a precedent-setting decision in California, holding that an employee scheduled for an on-call shift may be entitled to certain wages for that shift ...

On February 1, 2019, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ("EEOC") announced that the agency is giving employers two additional months to file their EEO-1 workforce data surveys, extending the deadline from March 31, 2019 to May 31, 2019. The extension comes as a result of the EEOC’s partial lapse in appropriations and closure during the recent shutdown of the federal government. According to the EEOC website, detailed instructions for submission of EEO-1 data will be forthcoming.

Each year, the EEOC requires private employers who are subject to Title VII with 100 or ...