Thank you to my colleague, Jonathan Schaefer, for this post. Jon focuses his practice on environmental compliance counseling, occupational health and safety, permitting, site remediation, and litigation related to federal and state regulatory programs. Today OSHA issued a final rule approving two additional quantitative fit testing protocols for inclusion in appendix A of the Respiratory Protection Standard. These protocols are: The modified ambient aerosol condensation nuclei counter (CNC) quantitative fit testing protocol for full-facepiece and…

[With apologies to the great Yogi Berra!] Over the last three years, I have spent a good bit of space on this blog keeping manufacturers informed of the Department of Labor’s efforts to raise the wages of lower and middle level managerial employees and supervisors by raising the “salary threshold”.  See Blog posts of March 14, 2019, November 5, 2017, August 31, 2017, September 19, 2016, and May 31, 2016. …

Last night, I had the chance to attend an interesting panel discussion featuring Richard Steffens (Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere, U.S. Department of Commerce) and Jacobeth Hernandez (Consul for Economic Affairs at the Consulate General of Mexico in New York).  The topic was the USMCA, which is the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement that is designed to replace NAFTA.  Ok, enough with the acronyms. If you are wondering where things stand with the USMCA and…

Over the summer, EPA published a policy document to enhance cooperation between it and the many state agencies that enforce federal environmental programs. The document formalizes a long-standing priority of this administration to, as we previously reported, “rebalance the power between Washington and the states to create tangible environmental results for the American people.” The policy outlines procedures for effective communication and planning, as well as details regarding the balance of power between EPA…

This blog post is dedicated to those of you who took a heathy summer break and want to catch up on the summer’s major developments.  Let the speed reading begin! As predicted here, the Trump Administration launched a series of not-so-surprising raids to arrest undocumented workers.  As of this writing, there has not been a noticeable increase in the prosecution of employers who employ undocumented workers.  We can expect more ICE raids…

Manufacturers generally understand the importance of utility patents and branding in protecting their creations from unfair competition and confusion of their customers. But the power of the design patent sometimes goes overlooked. While the United States Patent Office has issued over ten million numbered utility patents, it has not yet reached the one-million-mark on design patents. My suggestion to manufactures: consider both for any new product because recent federal decisions may make it very worth…

The United States Treasury Department came out with a report last week that concludes that business email compromises (BEC) are costing U.S. companies more than $301 million per month. The report confirms that the two industries hit the hardest by these scams are manufacturing and construction. The report, issued by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, reports that 1,100 BEC scams occurred each month against U.S. companies in 2018, which is an increase from 500…