With the passage of the Healthy Starts Act, Washington has expanded the rights of pregnant employees to receive reasonable accommodations in the workplace.  

Putting an end to an employer’s previous conundrum of determining what constitutes “recently” separated when evaluating a former employee’s request to review his or her personnel file, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ruled that terminated employees are not entitled to inspect their personnel files. 

Effective immediately, Oregon’s overtime law has been clarified to provide relief to non-union employers operating mills, factories or other manufacturing facilities. It has also been revised, effective January 1, 2018, to limit the number of weekly hours employees in such establishments may work. 

Oregon has become the first state in the nation to regulate employer scheduling practices in the food service, hospitality, and retail industries. The new law, Senate Bill 828, will take effect on July 1, 2018.

For reporting in 2018 and going forward, government contractors will gain the efficiency of pulling a single data snapshot as of December 31 for reporting on both EEO-1 and VETS-4212 reports.  

The Department of Labor has released its annual Health and Welfare Fringe Benefits Rate adjustment for 2017-18, announcing two separate rates for the Service Contract Act.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has indefinitely stayed the deadline for compliance with the pay data collection aspects of the revised EEO-1 form.