Special thanks to our guest contributors Anne Batter, Alexandra Minkovich, Joshua Odintz, Christopher Hanna, Etienne Couret and Derek Gumm. After months of partisan bickering and Senate inaction, Congress finally passed another round of COVID-19 relief legislation as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, P.L. 116-260, (“CAA”), which was signed into law on December 27, 2020. We provide a summary of the tax-related CAA provisions and key modifications to the…

The US Department of Labor is developing a new regulation on joint employment under the FLSA, a possible first step towards reversing the Trump administration’s business-friendly rule on the joint employer standard. First Public Notice of Possible New Regulation On February 23, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) posted on its website that the proposed rule, Joint Employer Status Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, is pending regulatory review. The…

As predicted here, on February 19, the DOL formally withdrew gig-worker guidance from the Trump administration. The DOL’s Wage and Hour Administration ditched a pair of interpretative letters from 2019, including one that platform-based companies could have used as a legal defense against claims that their drivers are employees subject to the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime provisions. The classification rules issued under the Trump DOL were widely viewed as business-friendly.…

We recently published an update to our 50-state Shelter-In-Place / Reopening Tracker. Please see HERE. This is updated weekly. For your convenience, here is a summary of the major updates from around the country: The following jurisdictions extended their state-wide orders and/or the duration of the current phase of their reopening plans: Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana and Vermont. The Governor of Alaska decided not to renew the state’s COVID-19 disaster declaration following its expiration…

Special thanks to our guest contributors Ginger Partee and John Foerster. In this Mobility Minute our Global Immigration and Mobility attorneys discuss changes to the H-1B program under the Biden Administration. We will quickly review what was the final rule under the Trump Administration and provide insight on the new final rule, including practical considerations for in-house counsel and HR executives preparing for this year’s H-1B lottery. Click here to listen to the Mobility…

Special thanks to presenters Melissa Allchin, Matthew Gorman, Christopher Guldberg, Scott McMillen, Betsy Morgan, Michael Poland, Sandhya Sharma, Aimee Soodan, Brian Wydajewski. In these recordings of our two-part webinar series, our presenters take a look back at 2020 and forecast what is likely to have the most significant impact on Illinois employers in 2021. Part 1 of the Illinois Employer Update focuses on Labor & Employment…

On February 4, 2021, House Democrats reintroduced the Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2019 (PRO Act). The sweeping labor legislation, which would return many provisions of current labor laws to their pre-1947 status, would create new claims and impose punitive penalties and strengthen a number of union and employee rights. The legislation has a checkered past: it passed in the House in early 2020, but stalled in the then Republican-controlled Senate. Now, under…