Labor & Employment

In March 2014, President Obama directed the Secretary of Labor to prepare and propose new FLSA regulations. These new rules were to be announced late last year, but have been repeatedly delayed. Now it appears the new rules will be announced later this month. While the scope of the changes is unknown, it is anticipated the changes will reduce the number of employees who qualify for exempt status.

It’s time to begin preparing H-1B petitions for an early April filing and Oct. 1, 2015, effective date.

Advance planning is crucial. Due to the improving economy and the backlog of demand from April 2014, the H-1B cap will likely be exceeded again this year. Employers that fail to file H-1B petitions on April 1 may lose the opportunity to employ the intended foreign national candidate.

Last week, Judge Richard J. Leon of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia vacated the “third-party” regulation on the federal companionship exemption, which would have prevented third-party employers from utilizing the companionship exemption from minimum wage and overtime, as well as the “live-in” exemption from overtime.

On Dec. 31, 2014, the judge temporarily stayed the regulations that would have significantly altered the duties an exempt companion could provide. The regulations, which were set to go into effect at midnight on Dec. 31, would have prevented exempt companions from providing any “general household work” at all, and would have prevented them from engaging in any “care” of the client for more than 20 percent of their working time.

A Dec. 1 Strafford webinar on the legal and regulatory challenges of Ebola will feature five Husch Blackwell attorneys. The 90-minute CLE webinar with interactive Q&A will provide guidance to healthcare counsel and their clients in addressing HIPAA and EMTALA concerns when treating Ebola patients.

The panel will discuss state and federal mandatory reporting requirements, employment issues and lessons learned from the first U.S. Ebola cases.

Now that patients with Ebola have landed on U.S. soil, hospitals and other healthcare providers must prepare for the possibility that a patient with Ebola will walk through the doors. In this Oct. 30 webinar, Husch Blackwell presenters will look at some of the pressing legal issues related to treating patients with communicable diseases such as Ebola, and what providers can do now to prepare their clinical, compliance and legal teams.

The line between “white collar crime” and “street crime” is often blurred as prosecutors and investigators deploy all of the tools at their disposal against white collar and regulatory offenses. Principal among these tools is the search warrant. While the execution of a lawfully obtained search warrant cannot be stopped, a company’s reaction to the search and to the agents conducting it can have a significant impact on the course of a government investigation. A well-executed response may yield intelligence about the nature and scope of the investigation and may limit the amount of information the government obtains.

In this post, we present an overview of the search warrant process and offer some basic guidelines that may be used in preparing for and responding to a search warrant.

New rules by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) will require federal contractors and subcontractors to ask applicants and current employees whether they are individuals with disabilities.  These new rules are described in a recent alert by Husch Blackwell attorney Molly Kurt. 

While such an inquiry is otherwise prohibited by the Americans…

Husch Blackwell attorney Molly Kurt recently addressed this question in a review of cases in which OFCCP has attempted to assert jurisdiction over hospitals as covered federal subcontractors.  Most recently, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued UPMC Braddock et al. v. Harris, in which the district court affirmed the decision…

This post was prepared by Toni Blackwood and Tim Hilton, labor and employment attorneys at Husch Blackwell. 

Following 12 months of public comment, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) issued a revised Form I-9 on Friday, March 8, 2013. The form has a new look, contains more specific instructions and solicits additional information. Although the form is available for use now, it becomes mandatory in May 2013.

Every U.S. employer is required to record on Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 the employment authorization and identity of every person hired in the U.S. High profile enforcement actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), growing employer experience with high administrative fines resulting from ICE I-9 audits, and the public debate over illegal immigration have combined to raise awareness in recent years of the importance of Form I-9 to all employers. These factors all make it vital that employers have a clear understanding of the form itself and how to complete it.

The new form contains additional data fields, such as those asking for the email address, telephone number (both optional) and foreign passport number for the employee in Section 1. The new form includes a prominent warning to new employees of the consequences of using false documents or making false statements when completing Form I-9. This is an important addition, as ICE has pursued remedies against individuals for using false documents and for making false claims of citizenship on Form I-9. There are also overall improvements in the form’s layout, making the employer’s Section 2 easier to read and understand. Perhaps the most obvious change is that the form has expanded to two pages.

While union organizing is decreasing in so many other parts of the economy, the healthcare industry remains a target.  The Service Employees International Union in particular continues in its efforts to organize healthcare facilities throughout the United States.  A recent settlement agreement through the NLRB between the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Service…