Wage and hour regulations in New Jersey are among the toughest in the nation, and the pandemic has increased the potential that employers could inadvertently violate the rules. In the latest episode of the IssuesWatch Podcast, Kathleen Caminiti, Esq., a wage and hour expert with Fisher Phillips, explains the five major areas all employers need to be aware of in order to avoid making expensive mistakes.
NEW YORK (February 24, 2021) – Fisher Phillips, one of the country’s preeminent labor and employment law firms representing employers, announces the addition of Amanda Blair as an associate in the firm’s New York office.
A new Pay Data Reporting law set to take effect in March of 2021, will have a ripple effect on many companies with employees in the Golden State. In a continuing effort to reduce gender and racial pay gaps and after years of a back-and-forth struggle at the federal level between the Obama and Trump Administrations over employer pay data reporting, California has adopted its own requirement with the enactment of SB 973. Effective March 31, 2021, private employers with 100 or more employees will be required to submit to the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) an annual pay data report broken down by race, ethnicity, and sex.
The requirement generally tracks the “Component 2” EEO-1 pay data reporting that was proposed by the Obama Administration and only briefly implemented by the federal EEOC. However, there are many unanswered questions about this new law, including how it may impact employers with employees located outside of California. This is also likely to be an area of future activity under a Biden Administration, so this issue could extend well beyond the borders of California in the near future. Fisher Phillips is proud to host this timely webinar, providing employers with the very latest on the new law and applicable guidance from the DFEH. Attendees will review how employers can audit and analyze pay data to ensure compliance with this statute and state and federal equal pay laws and learn the tools needed to be prepared to comply with this new requirement come March of 2021.
During the Obama Administration, OSHA made numerous changes to its occupational injury and illness recordkeeping and reporting requirements. These changes to its recordkeeping standard dramatically increased employers’ reporting requirements. COVID-19 also changed how employers reported fatalities and hospitalizations. The Biden Administration most likely will focus strongly on recordkeeping violations.
Many employers think their OSHA recordkeeping logs and procedures are fully compliant, only to learn after an OSHA inspection and, in some cases, hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties, that they were not. Under OSHA’s recordkeeping regulation, covered employers are required to prepare and maintain logs for work-related occupational injuries and illnesses as well fatalities, using the OSHA 300 log. In addition, on February 1 of each year, all covered employers must post their 300A summaries for three (3) months.
This presentation will (1) examine the many recordkeeping errors that employers make, especially those involving COVID-19 and the use of temporary employees; (2) cover how to coordinate your injury and illness recordkeeping with other recordkeeping requirements and how employers can effectively use recordkeeping to improve their current safety and health management program; and (3) examine in detail the increased employer reporting requirements and expanded liability for all employers.