A preview of coming attractions!

The Trump Administration issued its Fall 2018 regulatory agenda this week, which includes many items of interest to employers. Here are the highlights:

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH ADMINISTRATION

Workplace violence prevention in health care and social services. The review of OSHA's proposed standard under the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act will begin in March 2019. The SBREFA review was previously going to begin in January 2019.

Tracking of workplace injuries and illnesses. Proposed regulations issued in July would require employers to submit information about workplace injuries and illnesses to OSHA electronically, but would not require employers to submit their OSHA 300 logs or 301 incident reports. Final regulations are expected in June 2019.

OFFICE OF FEDERAL CONTRACT COMPLIANCE PROGRAMS

Religious conscience protections for federal contractors. The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs will issue proposed regulations regarding protections for federal contractors who have religious objections to complying with certain OFCCP requirements, presumably directives prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The proposed regulations may be issued in December 2018.  

Wait! We have even more!

WAGE AND HOUR

Overtime rule. We were originally supposed to have a new proposed overtime rule about a year ago. The deadline was then extended until October 2018. According to the regulatory agenda, the deadline has been pushed out yet again, to January 2019.

As I have reported earlier, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor conducted a number of "listening sessions" with the public during the month of September. We expect the proposed regulations, when they are finally issued, to raise the salary threshold for white-collar exemptions from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. However, the Trump Administration threshold is not expected to be as high as the threshold of $913 a week that was adopted by the Obama Administration ( and ultimately enjoined by a court). 

Clarification on calculating "regular rate." Overtime pay is based on an employee's "regular rate," which may or may not be the same as the hourly rate of pay or weekly salary divided by hours worked. (It's complicated, as you already knew.) Proposed regulations clarifying how employers should calculate the regular rate are expected in December 2018.

"Joint employment" under the FLSA. Proposed regulations on when entities are "joint employers" for FLSA purposes are expected in December 2018. 

You won't want to miss! No one will be seated after the first five minutes! It's the greatest regulatory agenda since Spring 2018!

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