January and February 2019 Employment Law and Regulations Update

Welcome back to the Reflexis Employment Law and Regulations Update! In this month’s article, we’ve included notable changes in United States regulations from January and February. In the future, we’ll be looking at global trends as well.

As you can understand, this list of new laws and regulations is not exhaustive, nor is it intended as legal advice. Reflexis strongly recommends you consult with your legal counsel regarding any substantive employment law and regulation changes that may affect your organization.

State of Washington:

Effective April 30, 2019, Premiums collected by employer from employees for paid family and medical leave benefits for Q1 2019 must be remitted.

Seattle, Washington:

Employers with 20 or more employees worldwide are requires to offer employees who work at least 10 hours per week a pretax payroll deduction based on the allowable amount set by the Internal Revenue Services, for transit options other than a single occupancy vehicle.

Alternatively, employers may subsidize all or part of a transit pass for eligible employees.  Details regarding the subsidy option are expected later in 2019.

Employers must offer an eligible employee the pre-tax payroll deduction within 60 days of the employee’s employment start date and, if the employee elects it, must provide the deduction within 30 days after election.

Enforcement will not begin until January 1, 2021.

Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

Effective July 1, 2019, Employer’s must start collecting the contribution rate of 0.63% on the first $128,400 of an individual’s annual earnings. Regulations and additional clarification should be coming in March 2019.

Effective January 1, 2020, Sunday and holiday premium pay rate decreases to 1.3 times the employee’s regular hourly rate of pay.

State of Tennessee:

Unclaimed wage reporting date changed from May 1, 2019.

District of Columbia:

Tipped employee payroll must be prepared by a third party payroll processer, effective January 1, 2020.

Philadelphia, PA:

Effective January 1, 2020:

A retail, hospitality or food service business which employs 250 or more employees and has 30 or more locations worldwide regardless of where those employees perform work, including but not limited to chain establishments or franchises associated with a franchisor or network of franchises that employ more than 250 employees in aggregate must provide its employees with the following:

• At the time of hire, a written good faith estimate of the employee’s work schedule, including average no. of weekly work hours in a typical 90 day period, whether any on-call shifts are requires;
• On or before the commencement of employment, a written work schedule that runs through the last date of the currently posted schedule.
• Opportunity to make requests and changes to proposed work schedule at or before the commencement of employment.
• Posted notice of the employees’ work schedules, 10 days ahead of the first day of the applicable work schedule (increases to 14 days’ advance notice effective January 1, 2020).
• Posted notice of any changes to the work schedule as promptly as possible and prior to the change taking effect.
• Pay half-pay for any decrease in work hours resulting from a change made more than 24 hours after the deadline for providing notice of the work schedule; and one hour of pay for any increase or neutral change made more than 24 hours after the deadline for providing notice of the work schedule.
• 9 hours break between shifts, which the employee can voluntarily waive, in which case, the employees must be paid $40 for each shift for which the employee waives the rest period.
• Offer work shifts to existing employees, before offering to new employees or using a staffing agency.
• Post available shifts for existing employees for at least 72 hours.

To learn more, stay tuned for me – Andrew Ngo, Senior Corporate Counsel – to give my next update in March! Visit www.reflexisinc.com for more information on how Reflexis can help you increase compliance rates and stay on top of new labor laws and regulations.