Daylight Savings ends March 10th: This year has gone fast and now we are changing time again.  Set your clocks forward one hour Sunday morning (March 10). Daylight Saving Time was first proposed by George Vernon Hudson in 1895, and its use in the U.S. was first mandated during World War I. It was subsequently used on and off for years by various countries and U.S. states. Since the 1970s; however, it has mostly remained in effect in the U.S. and Europe. The salaries of exempt employees are not affected by Daylight Savings Time. As for non-exempt employees, employers will have to decide whether to pay those employees who are at work when the clock is set forward for this “lost” hour. They do not have to be paid for it since they did not actually work it. The employer may also have to decide whether the lost hour, if paid, will count toward overtime or not (it does not have to). However, an employer must also determine if the hour counts towards leave accrual. To get a copy of a poster, click here.  

Senate committee moves nominees for Labor and EEOC to Senate for confirmation: The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee advanced to the full chamber several of the president’s long-stalled picks to fill U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and U.S. Department of Labor vacancies.  The slate of approved picks includes Janet Dhillon, whom the president tapped to chair the EEOC, DOL wage and hour administrator nominee Cheryl Stanton, and assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health nominee Scott Mugno. The committee advanced the nominees by a 12-11 party-line vote.  The committee also cleared the nominations of William Beach to head the DOL’s Office of Labor Statistics, John Pallasch to run the agency’s Employment and Training Administration, and John Lowry III to be assistant secretary of labor for veterans’ employment and training. Also approved Wednesday were three picks to serve on the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission and two nominees to vacancies in the Department of Education and National Endowment for the Arts.  Source: Law360 2/28/19

Michigan employers are not required to hire medical marijuana users: In an unpublished opinion, a state appellate court held the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act (MMMA) did not provide a cause of action for an applicant whose conditional job offer from the City of Lansing was rescinded after he tested positive for marijuana during a mandatory pre-employment drug test. Eplee v. City of Lansing, 2019 Mich. App. LEXIS 277 (Feb. 19, 2019).  The court held the MMMA did not make medical marijuana users a protected class and did not “provide an independent right protecting the medical use of marijuana in all circumstances.” It distinguished the outcome in this case from that in a trio of cases in which a separate Michigan appellate court panel held medical-marijuana-using employees discharged for failing an employer’s mandatory drug test were entitled to state unemployment benefits. In that instance, the employees had a right to unemployment benefits that was denied based on their medical marijuana use. However, in the more recent case, the applicant did not have a right to, or property interest in, employment with the city.  Source: Littler Mendelson PC 2/22/19

Congressional Democrats pushing bill for employer liability for gender pay gaps: The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor voted 27-19 along party lines to send the Paycheck Fairness Act to the House floor. The bill is the Democrats’ first work-related initiative to make it through committee since the party took control of the House last month.  The Paycheck Fairness Act would make employers with pay gaps between men and women liable for damages unless they can show non-sex, business-based reasons for the differentials, among other things. The current version of the Equal Pay Act outlaws paying men and women differently for the same work, with four exceptions: Employers can pay workers at different rates if they do so based on seniority, merit, the quantity, or quality of the employee’s work, or “any other factor other than sex.” Other provisions of the bill would direct the U.S. Department of Labor to study the pay disparities and provide information to employers and require the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to start collecting pay data from employers. The bill would block employers from using or soliciting job applicants’ past salaries to set their pay, which women’s advocates say perpetuate existing sex-based pay gaps.  With a divided congress, the bill is unlikely to have traction in the Senate.  Source: Law360 2/27/19

Next benefit season healthcare costs will likely increase:  Workers and their families who sought care shelled out an average of nearly $1,200 in out-of-pocket costs in 2017, according to a report published Tuesday by the Health Care Cost Institute. This spending, which includes deductibles, copays, and co-insurance, is up nearly 15% from five years earlier.  Health care spending continues to grow faster than inflation and the economy as a whole. But the increase is fueled mainly by higher prices rather than more usage, said Niall Brennan, the institute's CEO. And those in employer-based plans are not immune. Total spending for those with job-based coverage rose to an all-time high of $5,641, on average, per person in 2017, though the rate of growth slowed a bit. This includes payments by employers and insurance companies.   Source:  CNN 2/12/19

U.S. VETS Medallion Award program is open:  The application period for the 2019 HIRE Vets Medallion Award is now open, and the deadline to apply is April 30, 2019. The program recognizes small businesses, non-profit organizations, and large companies for leadership in recruiting, employing, and retaining America's veterans. Applicants are evaluated on a range of criteria, including veteran hiring and retention rates, availability of veteran-specific resources, leadership programs, dedicated human resources, and compensation and tuition assistance programs To apply for the award, visit HireVets.gov.  Source: DOL VETS

H-2B cap hit: U.S. businesses use the H-2B program to employ foreign workers for temporary nonagricultural jobs. Currently, Congress has set the H-2B cap at 66,000 per fiscal year, with 33,000 for workers who begin employment in the first half of the fiscal year (October 1 - March 31) and 33,000 for workers who begin employment in the second half of the fiscal year (April 1 - September 30) plus any unused numbers from the first half of the fiscal year, if any. On February 19, the number of beneficiaries USCIS received petitions for surpassed the total number of remaining H-2B visas available for the H-2B cap for the second half of FY 2019. In accordance with regulations, USCIS determined it was necessary to use a computer-generated process, commonly known as a lottery, to ensure the fair and orderly allocation of H-2B visa numbers to meet, but not exceed, the remainder of the FY 2019 cap. On February 21, USCIS conducted a lottery to randomly select petitions from those received on February 19. As a result, USCIS assigned all petitions selected in the lottery the receipt date of February 22. Premium processing service for petitions selected in the lottery also began on that date.

Is diversity of a tech company confidential information?  Tech firms say yes.  Firms including Oracle and Palantir Technologies argue that detailed, government-mandated figures on the number of women and people of color they employ must remain confidential. Making them public, they say, would be tantamount to giving away proprietary technology and hand competitors a “road map” to poach talent. As criticism grows over Silicon Valley’s “bro” culture and its lack of minority representation, claiming the figures are too valuable an asset to share could allow companies to pay lip service to diversity with little or no accountability. Tech’s race and gender problem has become a focal point as the industry has risen to dominate large swaths of the U.S. economy. Everyone from Apple to Google and Facebook has publicly embraced the importance of diversity and made repeated commitments to become less homogeneous. Yet thus far, the industry wide efforts have yielded scant progress. The latest U.S. government data, released in 2016, reinforces the point. While the proportion of women has crept up, racial disparities persist. Black employees made up less than 3% of the Silicon Valley workforce and Hispanic workers accounted for less than 7% -- little improvement from prior years. Source:  Bloomberg 2/13/19