From our Capital Thinking blog, our public policy colleague Stacy Swanson shares the latest federal employment law developments in in the legislative and executive branches during the week of July 26, 2021.
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This is a weekly post spotlighting labor topics in focus by the US legislative and executive branches during the previous week. In this issue, we cover:
- US Economy Update
- COVID-19 Updates
- Biden Administration Labor Leadership Updates
- Final Rule to Rescind March 2020 Joint Employer Rule
- Readout of the President’s Meeting with Legislators on Immigration
- Commerce Secretary Spotlights Caregiving Services Challenges
- Legislation to End Forced Arbitration in the Workplace Reintroduced
- EEOC Voting Transparency Challenged
- Northern Triangle Grant Funding Opportunity
- OSHA-Shipbuilding Alliance Program Announced
- Upcoming Congressional Hearing
The pandemic has given an enormous boost to working from home, in particular (to state the obvious) when it was mandatory. Where roles permitted it, even those employers and employees most vigorously opposed to it simply had no choice but to accept it. When quizzed about the reasons why they oppose WFH, most employers’ main reason will be that they fear a drop in productivity when the employee is left to his own devices. And even if surveys suggest that during the pandemic employees were in fact more productive working from home – because the daily commute was converted mostly into working time – the perceived lack of supervision on WFH remains a source of concern for employers.
On July 26, the 31st anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), President Biden announced in a Rose Garden briefing that persons experiencing long-term COVID-19 symptoms may qualify as persons with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”) and other federal statutes that protect persons with disabilities, such as Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (“Rehab Act”) and Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act a/k/a “Obamacare.”
Sexual harassment is absolutely no laughing matter, but it is difficult to suppress a tired smile when reading the government’s Response to its 2019 consultation on harassment in the workplace. This is very heavy on prospective voter-appeal but rather lighter (weightless, basically) on the practicalities.
This summer has been an eventful one as far as it relates to high-level personnel matters at the National Labor Relations Board’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
I will start this third part of our Working from Home series with a confession: I worked the first couple of weeks of lockdown from a small table dragged in from our balcony. Not because I don’t have a fully equipped and ergonomically approved home office, because I do. I just didn’t like the vibe in there and preferred a different view. There, that should set the tone for today’s topic.
Issuing the California Supreme Court’s decision in a much anticipated case, Justice Liu on behalf of a unanimous court explained in 