HR Alerts – March 2016

Large Employers May Soon Have to Report Pay Data

Late last week the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced a proposed change to the annual Employer Information Report, or EEO-1, which would require that employers with more than 100 employees report pay data in addition to the information they currently provide on race, ethnicity, sex, and job category.

The proposed rule was published in the Federal Register on February 1. The comment period is now open, and will close on April 1, 2016.

If the proposed revision is adopted, private employers and federal contractors with over 100 employees would be required to submit data on employees’ W-2 earnings and hours worked. Federal contractors with 50-99 employees would continue to report on race, ethnicity, and sex by job category, but would not report earnings data; private employers with fewer than 100 employees would continue to be exempt from EEO-1 reporting.

If implemented, employers would be required to submit pay data as of the September 30, 2017 EEO-1 filing deadline. We will keep you updated on any developments as we learn of them.

DOL Proposes Rule Requiring Paid Sick Leave for Some Federal Contractors

On Feb. 25th, the U.S. Department of Labor published a proposed rule implementing Executive Order 13706, which requires paid sick leave for some federal contractors. The Executive Order was originally issued on Labor Day 2015.

The rule requires parties that enter into covered contracts with the Federal Government to provide covered employees with up to 7 days of paid sick leave annually, including paid leave allowing for family care.

Contractors will also be required to calculate employees’ accrual of paid sick leave each workweek. Unused paid sick leave will carry over from one year to another, but cannot exceed 56 hours at a time; any time carried over will not count towards the 56 hour requirement for the next year.

Under the proposal, the following four major categories of contractual agreements are included:

1. Procurement contracts for construction covered by the Davis-Bacon Act (DBA);
2. Service contracts covered by the McNamara-O’Hara Service Contract Act (SCA);
3. Concessions contracts, including any concessions contracts excluded from the SCA by the Department’s regulations at 29 CFR 4.133(b); and
4. Contracts in connection with federal property or lands and related to offering services for Federal employees, their dependents, or the general public.

For a fact sheet and more on this topic, click here.

The comment period for this proposed rule is now open. If interested, you can submit comments at www.regulations.gov.

The deadline to submit comments is March 28. The Department of Labor is required to issue final regulations by September 30, 2016.

Update: FLSA Proposed Overtime Changes Could Arrive As Early As Spring

In the latest update concerning the FLSA white collar exemption regulations, DOL secretary Thomas Perez said he “is confident” the DOL will publish the final rule in “Spring 2016.” However, Patricia Smith, the Solicitor of Labor, recently stated the estimated publish date will be in July 2016.

(Smith’s estimation is the same as was published in the Fall 2015 Unified Agenda and Regulatory Plan released by the Office of Management and Budget.)

Smith also said the regulations would become effective 60 days after the publish date. That would leave employers with 60 days to bring their companies to compliance.

Again, we cannot know for sure when the DOL will make the change. But we recommend employers prepare themselves.

Click here to read our blog post for more info about these changes.

We will keep you updated as developments occur.