Blog
Our blog offers important resources, helpful articles, and practical ideas on the human resources topics that matter to you.
Our blog offers important resources, helpful articles, and practical ideas on the human resources topics that matter to you.
Home / Media / Blog / June 2023 Legal Updates
INFINITI HR is happy to provide Monthly State Labor Law Updates as a service to our subscribers. These briefs provide a general description and are not meant to be all-inclusive of compliance requirements. This list is not inclusive of all legislative changes for employers across the U.S. Changes may have been addressed in previous updates, which can be accessed from our blog.
Employers are encouraged to work with their Inspiring HR Consultant before making policy changes to capture the full requirements of these laws.
Some of the notable recent and upcoming state changes in this issue are as follows:
The New Jersey Temporary Workers Bill of Rights Law applies to temporary employees who contract for employment with a temporary service firm. A “temporary help service firm” is defined as any person or entity who employs temporary employees for the purpose of assigning those employees to a client to assist with temporary, excess, or special workloads.
The following went into effect on May 7, 2023:
In there is a change in the temporary worker’s schedule, shift or location, the temporary help service firm must provide notice to the temporary worker at least 48 hours in advance of the change when providing whenever possible.
If the temporary worker is not assigned work with a client for a day, the temporary help service firm must provide the temporary worker, upon request, confirmation they were available for work.
Temporary help service firms may not send temporary workers to an assignment where a strike, lockout, or other labor dispute exists without at the time of assignment.
The following goes into effect on August 5, 2023:
For more information visit, Department of Labor and Workforce Development | Temporary Workers in NJ: Rights and Protections.
New York recently amended Labor Law 167, which prohibits health care employers from requiring a registered nurse or a licensed practical nurse who provides direct patient care to work beyond their “regularly scheduled hours of work.” The new law sets an hourly limit for nurses’ regularly scheduled work hours, which is now defined as those hours a nurse has agreed to work and is normally scheduled to work, including prescheduled on-call time and time spent for the purposes of communicating shifts reports regarding patient status. Nurses may choose to work beyond their regularly scheduled hours.
Health care employers are defined as hospitals, nursing homes, outpatient clinics, comprehensive rehabilitation hospitals, residential health care facilities, drug and alcohol treatment facilities, adult day health care programs, diagnostic centers and maternal health care consortia.
A health care employer cannot require a nurse/LPN to work more than their regularly scheduled hours, except under the following circumstances:
Amendments to this law also require the healthcare employer to self-report to the New York State Department of Labor (NYSDOL) and the Department of Health (DOH) when they require nurses to work additional hours for at least 15 days in a month under one of the above exceptional circumstances. In the event the exceptional circumstances last for 45 days or more in any consecutive three-month period, the healthcare employer must submit an explanation for the need and provide an estimate of when the extra works hours will end.
Healthcare employers must display a poster in a location accessible to all employees. In addition, the NYSDOL created a Nurse Coverage Checklist to assist healthcare employers with complying with the new law.
All NY employers are required to adopt a Sexual Harassment Prevention policy and provide employees with mandatory training.
The NYSDOL recently updated the Sexual Harassment Prevention model policy, training videos and model training presentation slides, which include changes to the law. The changes include additional examples of sexual harassment, discrimination, and retaliation and illustrate how situations can occur even with employees working remotely and on virtual platforms. The revisions also include gender-based harassment and discrimination may occur beyond sexual contact or sexually suggestive conduct, including stereotyping or treating employees differently because they identify as cisgender, transgender, or nonbinary.
In addition to the above changes, the process and information for reporting complaints to the state and federal EEOC were revised.
Under H.B. 131, employers in Utah are no longer allowed to consider vaccination or immunity passport status when making hiring decisions or determining any benefits or conditions of employment. Government entities and places of public accommodation are also covered.
For private employers, some examples of entities that the law does not apply to include:
Employers operating in Utah that require proof of vaccination and/or immunity should review and update their policies accordingly.
During COVID, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) temporarily allowed employers to virtually inspect a remote new hire’s eligibility documents for the Employer section of Form I-9. ICE has announced that effective July 31, 2023, virtual inspections will end.
What the change means:
The ICE has provided visual examples on how to notate updates to Form I-9 on the following site: https://www.uscis.gov/i-9-central/form-i-9-examples-related-to-temporary-covid-19-policies
We recommend:
If you hired remote employees during COVID 19 and have not yet inspected their documents in person, complete an I-9 audit to identify which employees’ documents must be reverified and act soon to update.
*Under California law, the only individuals who can assist clients with completing immigration forms (such as the Form I-9) are appointed Company employees, licensed attorneys, individuals authorized under federal law to provide immigration services, and individuals qualified and bonded as an immigration consultant under California law.
Interested in other current employment trends? Click the link to view the recent blog: Five Best Practices for Writing and Sharing Company Values or check back for more on human resources, payroll, insurance, and benefits.
This article does not constitute legal advice, and there are subtle variations in employment law as it pertains to this topic, depending on where your business operates. It is strongly suggested that you seek consultation or legal counsel before making policy decisions.
Join the INFINITI HR family! Subscribe to our newsletter and get the latest HR news and tips.
INFINITI HR helps companies reduce costs by managing human resource functions while allowing businesses to focus on their core operations that impact profitability. Our platform provides full regulatory compliance management, on-demand HR guidance, real-time payroll /tax filing, POS integration and access into industry leading True-Group master policies for workers’ compensation, employment practices liability insurance, and other operational business coverages.
Toll free: 866-552-6360