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!

If you have a union in your workplace, or if unions have tried to organize workers in your workplace, you know that unions need ways to communicate with your employees.  Before the current digital age, unions relied primarily on communicating through informational picketing and leafleting, posters and mailings, and individual and group meeting to encourage unionization or to communicate with members and represented employees.  Today, with the modern workplace and internet-connected workers, communications can be conducted far more quickly, efficiently, cheaply and often more effectively through electronic means, such as email.  But historically, unions have not been permitted access to company email systems.  The current rule is that “employees have no statutory right to use the[ir] Employer’s e-mail system” for non-work-related purposes. If unions and the current Presidential administration get their way, that all might change.

We recently posted on one of our firm’s other blogs, Information Intersection, about the joint guidance that was recently issued by the EEOC and FTC on employment background checks.  While much of the content of both the employer and employee directed guidance is not new or surprising, these publications further…

Yesterday, President Obama signed an executive order and issued a presidential memorandum pressing his equal pay agenda.  The executive order establishes that workers cannot be prevented from discussing their pay with other employees or applicants.  Its declared target is to support efforts to eradicate gender-based pay disparities.  Its aim though is probably more akin to using a hand-held mirror to shoot over your shoulder at the target.

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.

President Obama instructed the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) yesterday to change regulations to expand the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) overtime provisions, in an effort to provide time-and-a-half wages to more employees.  The President signed a memorandum instructing his Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez to “update” the DOL’s regulations regarding which employees are exempt from the FLSA’s coverage, and which employees are non-exempt, and thus must be paid time-and-a-half their regular wage rate for all hours worked beyond 40 hours in a week.  The White House also issued a “fact-sheet” on the issue.

While it is not clear exactly what the DOL may do in response to the President’s direction, many feel that one likely step will be an attempt by the DOL to amend the FLSA’s regulations to raise the salary requirement employees must meet to qualify as an exempt executive, administrative or professional employee.  The current salary requirement is at least $455 per week, an amount established with the last set of DOL changes to the FLSA’s regulations back in 2004.  (Prior to 2004, the salary amount was $250, a number which had stayed constant since 1975.)

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?