Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, New York state enacted a temporary emergency paid sick leave law for workers subject to a “mandatory or precautionary order of quarantine or isolation”.

Yesterday, Governor Newsom issued an Executive Order mandating that all California residents remain at home, except those needed to maintain continuity of operations of the federal critical infrastructure sectors.  The Order is open ended and will continue to be in place until the Governor orders otherwise.

What does this mean for California businesses?

In a press conference today, Governor Cuomo announced his plan to mandate 100% of non-essential workforce in New York stay home.  What does this mean for New York businesses?

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic and in an effort to prevent the spread of the virus, many employers are grappling with the need to immediately shut down operations.  This raises the question whether employers must pay out all wages (including paid time off) when employees are temporarily laid off or furloughed. In California, they might.

As reported on the Business Immigration Insights blog, employers, already dealing with a chaos of urgent-action items caused by COVID-19, must not overlook the stringent posting requirements under US Department of Labor (DOL) regulations for employees in H‑1B, H-1B1, and E-3 status, and for all employees, regardless of status, who are being sponsored for green cards through labor certification (“PERM”).

Read more here.

The United States Senate today passed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act and sent it to President Trump’s desk.  The President is expected to sign the bill into law this week.

The bill, which provides for paid sick leave and expanded family leave for certain employees for coronavirus-related reasons, passed the Senate without substantive changes.  The House initially passed the bill on Friday night, but made technical corrections to it late Monday.

For full details on how the legislation may affect employers, see our previous coverage of the bill here and here.

No doubt recognizing the unprecedented impact on business, Governor Gavin Newsom issued an Executive Order suspending the notice requirements under the California Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN Act), Cal. Lab. Code §§ 1401(a), 1402, 1403. The Executive Order suspends existing law that could have otherwise required employers to provide 60 days’ notice before instituting mass layoffs, relocations, or terminations, and could potentially have imposed steep penalties on employers who failed to do so.  Certain notice obligations remain, however, under the Executive Order.

Employers in the difficult position of making workplace reductions because of COVID-19-related business losses should spare a moment for consideration of layoff notice obligations under the federal Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification Act of 1988, 29 U.S.C. § 2100 et seq. (“WARN”) and its state counterparts (so-called “mini-WARN” laws). The “unforeseen business circumstances” exception in federal WARN and most analogous state laws may excuse strict compliance with notification requirements, but employers should take the time now to analyze the applicability of this exception rather than make assumptions about it.

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (“OSHA”) recently published Guidance for Preparing Workplaces for COVID-19 (“Guidance”), outlining steps employers can take to help protect their workforce. The Guidance focuses on the need for employers to implement engineering, administrative, work practice controls and personal protective equipment (“PPE”), as well as considerations for doing so. While there is no specific OSHA standard covering infectious disease or COVID-19 in particular, some OSHA requirements may apply to preventing occupational exposure to the virus including OSHA’s Bloodborne Pathogens standard (29 C.F.R. § 1910.20) Personal Protective Equipment (29 CFR 1910 Subpart I) Hazard Communication (29 C.F.R. § 1910.1200) and Recording and Reporting Occupational Injuries and Illnesses (29 C.F.R. § 1904). Also, the General Duty Clause of OSHA which requires employers to provide a “place of employment . . . free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm.”

Thanks to a recent bill signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo on February 6, 2020, striking employees in the State of New York must now only wait fourteen days until they are eligible to receive unemployment benefits. Senate Bill 7310 amends New York Labor Law § 592, reducing the waiting period for unemployment benefit eligibility for striking employees from seven weeks to two weeks.