Through Proskauer’s partnership with the City Bar Justice Center and Lawyers for Good Government, we helped launch the nationwide COVID-19 Small Business Remote Legal Clinic to consult with small businesses across a range of pressing issues: contracts & force majeure, leases, insurance, and, of course, the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program. One of the most active areas for the legal clinic has been labor & employment issues as entrepreneurs fight to keep their employees, balance their checkbooks, and abide by laws that seem to change by the week.
To train other participating firms and volunteers, a Proskauer team consisting of labor & employment partners Lloyd Chinn, Patrick Lamparello, and Nicole Eichberger and associates Caralyn Olie and Dominique Kilmartin, produced a webinar on the most important labor and employment law considerations for New York small businesses.
In the webinar and in our consultations, we have advised business owners through major decisions in determining if they qualify as essential or non-essential. If able to stay open, businesses face significant challenges to shifting to remote work and complying with wage-and-hour regulations as well as federal, state, and local rules with respect to personal and medical leave. Additionally, there are further issues in navigating employee furloughs, reductions in force, and the WARN Act that must be taken into account.
Uncertainty continues regarding when the economy will reopen, how much additional funding will be allocated for businesses in need, and what the world will look like when this is all over. Proskauer is following COVID-19-related developments on a daily basis and providing clients with needed guidance. For additional information, please visit our COVID-19 Resource Center, as well as specific labor and employment advice and coronavirus insights. You can apply to the COVID-19 Small Business Remote Legal Clinic here.