COVID-19
OSHA – The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued a 45-day extension to the comment period for the COVID-19 vaccination and testing emergency temporary standard (ETS). According to the agency, it pushed the deadline to Jan. 19, 2022 to allow stakeholders time to review the ETS and collect information and data necessary for comment. The extension comes shortly after two court rulings issued this week granted a preliminary injunction on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service vaccine mandate for health care workers, effectively halting its implementation nationwide pending further orders. More details.
Los Angeles, CA – The city began enforcement of a new ordinance requiring proof of vaccination to enter a wide variety of businesses, such as restaurants, theaters, gyms and salons, among others. While the rule took effect Nov. 8, city officials spent the past three weeks providing business owners the information and resources they need to comply. A first offense will bring a warning but subsequent ones could produce fines running from $1,000 to $5,000. Inspectors with the Department of Building and Safety will enforce the mandate, and the city hopes to eventually get assistance from the L.A. County Department of Public Health. More details.
New York, NY – The city council passed legislation to amend the city’s Earned Sick and Safe Time Act to provide employees with “COVID-19 child vaccination time,” which is an additional four hours of paid leave to accompany their child to receive a COVID-19 vaccination or care for them if they have a reaction to the vaccine. Specifically, the new law will require employers to provide employees who are parents or legal guardians of a child who is under 18 years old (or an older child who is incapable of self-care because of a mental or physical disability) with an additional four hours of paid leave, per injection, for COVID-19 child vaccinations. This leave cannot be charged against an employee’s accrual of safe/sick time under state or city law. More details.
Wages
Colorado – The governor signed an agreement with the union representing 31,000 state employees that will raise the minimum wage for thousands of government workers to $15/hr in 2022.The contract also secures an annual, three percent across-the-board raise for all public employee union workers. More details.
Bank of America – The company announced it is raising its minimum hourly wage to $21/hr and will reach $25/hr by 2025. A $21/hr wage rate equates to $44,000/yr. Bank of America raised its U.S. minimum wage in March 2020 to $20/hr, and the company said it will require all of its U.S. vendors to pay their employees whose work is dedicated to the bank at least $15/hr. More details.
Paid Leave
Connecticut – The state has officially opened the portal and begun taking applications from residents who want to participate in the state’s new paid family and medical leave program. Earlier this year, the legislature passed and the governor signed a new law allowing qualified workers to take up to 12 weeks of paid leave from work in a 12-month period if they or a family member are ill. Eight states now have some form of paid leave, and Connecticut’s is considered the most generous in the country. More details.
Labor Policy
Detroit, MI – The city council approved an ordinance establishing a process to create industry standards boards within the city. Under the new ordinance, when at least 150 workers in the same industry sign and turn in a petition to the city clerk, the city council will need to create a standards board for that specific sector within 45 days of the city confirming the petition’s validity. The boards will hold public meetings to collect survey data on the industry, do outreach, take testimony, and make recommendations for how workers should be treated, trained, paid, and other issues. The city is required to educate the public as to the board’s findings. These boards would not be creating new, enforceable rules, but instead recommendations. However, if their work reveals that existing laws are being infringed upon then they could be sent to the city’s lawyers for potential enforcement action. A board can also be created by request of the mayor or city council. There’s also a provision that bars employers from retaliating against employees who participate in the board. More details.
Labor Activism
Amazon – A regional director for the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) called for a new union election at an Amazon facility in Bessemer, Alabama. Workers at the warehouse previously rejected forming a union by a more than 2-to-1 margin in April but in Aug. an NLRB hearing officer said the company’s conduct around the previous vote had interfered with the election. The order for a new election largely rests on Amazon’s decision to install a mailbox in front of the fulfillment center to collect employees’ mail-in ballots for the union election. The NLRB said the move had a chilling effect on workers because it created the appearance that they were being surveilled. The decision did not specify the second election’s date or whether the vote will take place by mail or in-person. More details.
Starbucks – Employees at a cafe in Mesa, Arizona filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold a union election, marking the expansion of organizing efforts beyond the Buffalo, NY market. Six of the company’s stores in Buffalo are voting to join Starbucks Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). In a letter to the CEO Kevin Johnson, the employees who are leading the organizing effort at the Mesa location said they were forming a union “because we believe that this is the best way to contribute meaningfully to our partnership with the company” and ensure they have equal power. More details.
Tudor’s Biscuit World – Employees at one location of the seventy-unit chain filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to conduct an election to be formally represented by Local 400 of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). A spokesperson for the union said they had collected union cards from 80 percent of the staff. Workers cite mistreatment by management and claim they are owed back wages for unpaid overtime. Employees also are claiming that management called the police when they were informed of the employees’ desire to unionize. More details.
Delivery
DoorDash – The company reached a settlement with the city of San Francisco and will pay more than $5.3 million under the agreement according to the city attorney. About $5.1 million will go to the nearly 4,500 DoorDash workers who completed deliveries in San Francisco between 2016 and 2020. The city opened a formal investigation in 2019 after media reports said the company was using customer tips to subsidize workers’ base pay. The city also alleged DoorDash was violating San Francisco’s health care benefit and paid sick leave laws by misclassifying workers as independent contractors, rather than employees. DoorDash did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement. More details.
Misc.
California – Opening arguments were heard this week in a case questioning the constitutionality of a law requiring publicly-traded companies headquartered in the state to have one member who identifies as a woman on their boards of directors by the end of 2019. By this coming January, boards with five directors must have two women and boards with six or more members must have three women. Penalties range from $100,000 fines for companies that fail to report board compositions to the secretary of state’s office. Companies that do not include the required number of female board members can be fined $100,000 for first violations and $300,000 for subsequent violations. The conservative legal group Judicial Watch sued the state claiming it’s illegal to use taxpayer funds to enforce a law that violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution by mandating a gender-based quota. The non-jury trial is expected to last a week. More details.
McDonald’s – In partnership with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the SOC investment group is calling on McDonald’s to conduct a civil rights audit in the wake of controversial comments by its CEO that were recently made public. SOC, an acronym for “Strategic Organizing Center,” describes its mission as “holding corporations and their leadership accountable for irresponsible and unethical corporate behavior and excessive executive pay, reflecting the long-term interests of workers and their families invested in union pension funds.” The group is alleging that the company’s business practices do not match its statements last year in the wake of protests following the death of George Floyd. Specifically, SOC mentioned that 72 percent of front-line workers are from underrepresented groups, compared with just 29 percent of the company’s leaders. It also highlighted lawsuits from 238 current and former Black franchisees accusing the company of “systemic and covert racial discrimination”. Other companies targeted by SOC include Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citi, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, State Street and Black Rock. More details.
Key Takeaways
- The Omicron variant could reignite the debate around masks, vaccines, and the appropriate measures employers should take to protect their employees and customers. While the legal wranglings around the federal vaccine mandates will likely continue for the foreseeable future, employers should continue to exercise discretion in how they approach this issue – with primary regard given to the concerns of their employees.
- A new study released this week calls into question the effectiveness of CEOs and other senior leaders when they publicly comment on pressing social, cultural, or political issues. While acknowledging the public pressure on CEOs to “engage,” the research team’s findings suggest that there is a limited audience for those comments and thus minimal effectiveness. We are neither endorsing nor disputing those findings but adding these data points to the overall discussions that leadership teams have on these issues. Our contention continues to be that corporate leaders are effective, credible messengers when appropriately advocating on behalf of their employees. Effectiveness and credibility on reputational issues tend to wane the further a company strays from connecting those issues directly to the company’s business model.
Podcast
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