APPLIES TO All Employers with Employees

EFFECTIVE May 4, 2020

QUESTIONS? Contact HR On-Call (888) 378-2456

The Employee Benefits Security Administration, the Department of Labor, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Department of the Treasury (“the Agencies”) recently issued a joint notification of relief, extending COBRA and ERISA deadlines and election periods.

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APPLIES TO All Employers with LA, MS, and TX Employees

EFFECTIVE April 20, 2020

QUESTIONS? Contact HR On-Call (888) 378-2456

On April 20, 2020, in Hewitt v. Helix Energy Sols. Grp., Inc., the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal stated that an employee who is paid a daily rate is not paid on a “salary basis.” The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) states:

“An employee will be considered to be paid on a ‘salary basis’ within the meaning of this part if the employee regularly receives each pay period on a weekly, or less frequent basis, a predetermined amount constituting all or part of the employee’s compensation, which amount is not subject to reduction because of variations in the quality or quantity of the work performed.”

The court stated that the term “predetermined amount” of pay means that an employee knows what they will be paid before the work is performed. There, an oil rig worker was paid on a biweekly basis a set amount for each day worked. Although the employee knew he would be paid biweekly, the exact amount of pay was not calculated until after the work was performed, because it was based on the number of days worked in the week. The FLSA requires exempt employees to receive the full salary for any week in which work is performed, without regard to the number of days or hours worked, which was not the case there.

Action Items

APPLIES TO All Employers with CA Employees

EFFECTIVE May 6, 2020

QUESTIONS? Contact HR On-Call (888) 378-2456

Gov. Newsom recently issued an Executive Order stating that employees are presumed to have contracted COVID-19 in the workplace for purposes of receiving workers’ compensation benefits if all of the following are met:

• The employee tested positive for or was diagnosed with COVID19 within 14 days after working at the employee’s place of employment at the employer’s direction;
• The work performed occurred between March 19, 2020 and July 5, 2020;
• The employee’s place of employment was not the employee’s home or residence; and
• If basing a claim on a diagnosis of COVID-19, the diagnosis must be done by a physician who holds a physician and surgeon license issued by the California Medical Board, and the diagnosis must be confirmed by further testing within 30 days of the date of the diagnosis.

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APPLIES TO All Employers with MA Employees

EFFECTIVE April 9, 2020

QUESTIONS? Contact HR On-Call (888) 378-2456

The Massachusetts Dept. of Criminal Justice Information Services (DCJIS) recently issued emergency regulations modifying the process for verifying the identity of an individual for whom a background check will be run through DCJIS’s iCORI database (CORI). As part of the normal CORI process, individuals must provide written authorization to run their criminal history and requestors must verify the individual’s identity in person. Because employers must limit in-person interactions due to COVID-19 and associated public safety restrictions, requestors can verify an applicant’s identity via teleconference rather than the usual in-person process.

Additionally, if a requestor is unable to verify an individual’s identity in person, by notary, or by teleconference, then the requestor may petition DCJIS for approval to use an alternative means to verify identity. Upon termination of the current state of emergency, all CORI requests verified in this manner must be verified either in person or through submitting a notarized CORI Acknowledgement Form within seven business days. Employers should track all individuals verified pursuant to these emergency measures in order to later obtain timely identification verifications.

Action Items

APPLIES TO All Employers with NY Employees

EFFECTIVE September 30, 2020

QUESTIONS? Contact HR On-Call (888) 378-2456

In response to the global pandemic, the state of New York implemented emergency paid sick leave provisions.  On April 3, 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed into law the 2021 fiscal year budget, inclusive of a new bill that enacts a permanent statewide sick leave program, effective later this year.

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