Troutman Pepper Locke's Labor + Employment Group

Subscribe to Troutman Pepper Locke's Labor + Employment Group's Posts

The following information was sent out yesterday (August 21, 2014) by members of our Labor & Employment team in Virginia.  If you have employees in Virginia, you need to read this and consider how it may affect your company.

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe signed Executive Order 24 on August 14, 2014, to establish an interagency task force on worker misclassification and payroll fraud.

As we have discussed in our prior blog posts in this series on the new OFCCP Regulations (which became effective on March 24, 2014), most of the new Regulations do not go into effect until the beginning of the contractor’s first plan year following March 24, 2014.  Many contractors have delayed implementing these new requirements because their new plan year has not yet begun.  The time for delaying is quickly coming to an end!

The EEOC recently announced that it will double its fine for employers who violate the notice posting requirements of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act, from $100 per violation to $210.   The new rule will go into effect on April 18, 2014.

Have you (or others at your company) considered using mandatory arbitration agreements with your employees?  The idea is to require an employee who ends up in an employment dispute to handle that dispute before an arbitrator, rather than by filing a lawsuit.  But are these agreements valid and enforceable?  A recent decision by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals (which handles cases from all federal courts in Georgia, Alabama and Florida) has a lot to say about the overall effectiveness and enforceability of mandatory arbitration agreements.

Today is the deadline for compliance with the first two steps of the new OFCCP regulations – which we discussed in our Steps One and Two blog post here.  We hope you are ready!  (You might want to call us if you are not.)

Assuming you are now in compliance with the first two steps, it is time to continue with Step Five.  This step must be implemented by the next time you develop an affirmative action plan after today.  However, we recommend implementing this step now, as explained below.

The Department of Labor says that contractors must follow the new OFCCP regulations for any affirmative action plans that are developed after March 24, 2014.  Will you be ready to assess your company’s compliance with the new requirement of seven percent (7%) disabled employees in each job group?  Will you be able to track your hiring of veterans against the new hiring benchmark?  Have you thought about the new narrative language that will be needed?

We continue now with step three of seven to getting into compliance with the new OFCCP regulations. As we said in our prior post covering steps one and two, on March 24, 2014 major revisions to regulations on the laws requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in affirmative action for disabled individuals and veterans go into effect. While steps one and two need to be in place on or soon after March 24, the remaining steps are only required to be in place as of the date of the first affirmative action plan developed after March 24…but they will take some significant time and effort to implement.

On March 24, 2014, major changes to regulations on the laws requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to engage in affirmative action for disabled individuals and veterans will go into effect. Is your company ready?

Now is the time to begin taking concrete steps to comply with the new regulations because some of the new required elements of your affirmative action program must be operational on March 24, 2014. Other requirements must be in place as of the date of your first affirmative action plan after March 24, but they make take some time to implement.