March 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 March.

As I’ve mentioned, 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.

Effective March 13, 2019

Baltimore, MD

Baltimore City Code Art. 11, §16-1, et seq., Lactation Accommodations in the Workplace. Employers with 2 or more employees must provide reasonable amount of time to accommodate an employee who desires to express breast milk. If possible, lactation break time must run concurrently with any paid rest or break time already required by law or authorized for the employee.  Break time that does not run concurrently with other paid rest or break times may be unpaid.

Employers must also provide a lactation location that is not a bathroom or closet and that meets certain criteria, including being located no more than 500 feet and 2 adjacent floors from the further employee to be served by the lactation location.

Employers must also have a written lactation accommodation policy.

Effective March 18, 2019

NYC, NY

Employers with 4 or more employees must have a written policy letting employees know about: (a) the availability of a lactation room, that is not a bathroom or closet and meets certain criteria; and (b) the process for requiring lactation-related accommodations, including taking breaks.

Effective March 29, 2019

Michigan

Earned Sick Time Act.  Employers must provide employees with up to 72 hours per year, accrued at a rate of 1 hour for every 30 hours worked, for qualifying reasons. If the employer has fewer than 10 employees, the 40 hours of accrued leave used for qualifying reasons must be paid and the remaining 32 hours may be unpaid; if the employer has 10 or more employees, then all 72 hours of accrued leave used for qualifying reasons must be paid.

Employees may use accrued sick time in the smaller of: (a) 1 hour increments or (b) the smallest increment that the payroll systems uses to account for other absences.

Effective April 1, 2019

Federal

Disclosure requirements regarding payroll card accounts under Consumer Fraud Protection Bureau regulations.

Effective April 10, 2019

Westchester, NY

Paid sick leave ordinance requires employers to allow employers to accrue and use up to 40 hours per year, accrued at a rate of 1 hour for every 30 hours worked, for qualifying reasons. If the employer has fewer than 5 employees, the accrued leave used for qualifying reasons may be unpaid; if the employer has 5 or more employees, then accrued leave used for qualifying reasons must be paid.

Employees may use accrued sick time in an initial daily amount of 4 hour increments, following which additional accrued sick time used in the same day may be used in the smallest increment that the payroll systems uses to account for other absences.

Effective April 30, 2019

Washington State

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

Effective July 1, 2019

Massachusetts

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 July 1, 2019

Washington DC

0.62% of covered employees’ total wages for Q1 2019 must be remitted.

Effective November 1, 2019

Tennessee

Unclaimed wage reporting date changed from May 1, 2019.

Effective January 1, 2020

Massachusetts

Sunday and holiday premium pay rate decreases to 1.3 times the employee’s regular hourly rate of pay.

Effective January 1, 2020

Colorado

Employers who allow employees who are paid less than $80,000 in wages to take paid leave for organ donation are allowed an income tax credit equal to 35% of the employer’s expenses incurred for (a) up to 10 days’ pay to the employee during such leave; and (b) the cost of temporary replacement employees during the employee’s organ donation leave.

Effective January 1, 2020

Washington DC

Tipped employee payroll must be prepared by a third party payroll processer.

Effective January 1, 2020

Philadelphia, PA

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.

Effective January 1, 2020

Rhode Island

Paid sick leave total annual accrual increases to 40 hours per year, from 32 hours per year.

Effective January 1, 2020

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.

To learn more, stay tuned for me – Andrew Ngo, Senior Corporate Counsel – to give my next update in April! 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.