On August 5, 2022, new Pennsylvania state wage-and-hour regulations for tipped and salaried nonexempt workers under the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act (PMWA) go into effect.
On March 10, 2022, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney signed into law the third iteration of the Public Health Emergency Leave law, which will guarantee up to forty hours of paid sick leave (COVID-19 leave) for eligible Philadelphia employees. The COVID-19 leave shall be provided to employees immediately without any waiting period or accrual requirements.
The Philadelphia City Council recently passed a third iteration of the Public Health Emergency Leave law that will guarantee up to forty hours of paid sick leave for Philadelphia employees to recover from COVID-19 or avoid exposing others, to care for a family member with COVID-19 or who exhibits symptoms that might jeopardize the health of others, to care for a child whose school or place of care has closed due to COVID-19, or to take time off to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine or booster shot (and address any side effects related to such vaccination).
On December 6, 2021, then-mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, signed legislation amending the city’s workplace antidiscrimination ordinance to include victims of domestic violence as a protected class. Under the amended ordinance, employers with five or more employees are prohibited from discriminating against individuals based on their actual or perceived status as victims of domestic violence and must attempt to reasonably accommodate such individuals, if needed. The Pittsburgh Commission on Human Relations, which is tasked with enforcing the ordinance, also established and released employer guidance, shedding more light on these new requirements.
On January 1, 2022, Philadelphia’s ordinance, titled, “Prohibition on Testing for Marijuana as a Condition for Employment,” Phila. Code § 9-5500, et seq., will take effect. The ordinance—which was passed by the Philadelphia City Council on April 22, 2021, and signed into law by Mayor Jim Kenney on April 28, 2021—states that in the City of Philadelphia it “shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer, labor organization, employment agency or agent thereof” to require a prospective employee to submit to pre-employment marijuana testing as a condition of employment.
On July 29, 2021, Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto signed a COVID-19 paid sick leave ordinance granting emergency paid sick leave for certain employees for COVID-19–related reasons. The ordinance will remain in effect for one year and will expire on July 29, 2022.
On August 5, 2021, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania held for the first time that Pennsylvania’s Medical Marijuana Act (MMA) allows an employee to sue his or her employer for taking an adverse employment action based on the employee’s status as a certified user of medical marijuana.
On June 30, 2021, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed an approximately $40 billion state budget package. In exchange for increased funding for public schools in the state budget, Governor Wolf agreed to repeal Pennsylvania’s new overtime regulations, which were set to increase the minimum salary that employers must pay to certain salaried employees to classify them as exempt from overtime requirements under the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act of 1968.
On June 15, 2021, Governor Tom Wolf’s administration certified the results of the May 2021 municipal primary election, and thereby formalized the approval of an amendment to the Constitution of Pennsylvania giving lawmakers the broad new power to extend or end disaster emergency declarations. Because the Philadelphia Public Health Emergency Leave law was set to “expire upon the expiration of the Proclamation of Disaster Emergency of the Governor of Pennsylvania related to the COVID-19 pandemic,” and the legislature voted on June 10, 2021, to end the disaster emergency declaration, it is now safe to say that the Philadelphia Public Health Emergency Leave law is no longer in effect.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recently held unenforceable a no-hire provision in a service contract between a logistics company and a trucking firm. In Pittsburgh Logistics Systems, Inc. v. Beemac Trucking LLC, et. al., the court reasoned that the no-hire provision at issue was overly broad and undermined fair competition for employees in the shipping and logistics industry.
Philadelphia’s newest Public Health Emergency Leave law went into effect on March 29, 2021. Unlike the prior iteration of the law that sunset on December 31, 2020, this law will stay in effect “for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
In Harrisburg Area Community College v. Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, No. 654 C.D. 2019, (October 29, 2020), the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania recently examined the interaction between Pennsylvania’s Medical Marijuana Act (MMA) and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act (PHRA). Specifically, the court addressed whether the PHRA’s prohibition against disability discrimination required a college to accommodate a student’s lawful use of medical marijuana under the MMA.
Elections in the United States are scheduled for Tuesday, November 3, 2020. Not only will the office of president of the United States be contested, but all 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 seats in the U.S. Senate are up for grabs. At the state level, elections will be held for the governorships of 11 U.S. states and 2 U.S. territories.
On September 25, 2020, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania became the first federal court in the Third Circuit to rule that Pennsylvania’s Medical Marijuana Act (MMA) allows an employee to bring a private lawsuit against his or her employer for taking an adverse employment action “solely on the basis of such employee’s status as an individual who is certified to use medical marijuana.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry’s (DLI) amendments to the regulations that exempt executive, administrative, and professional (so-called “white collar”) salaried workers from overtime requirements under the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act of 1968 (PMWA) went into effect on October 3, 2020. The amended regulations were originally approved on January 31, 2020.
On September 17, 2020, six months after Mayor Jim Kenney issued Executive Order 3-20, a Declaration of Emergency Related to the Known and Potential Presence of the Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 in Philadelphia, he signed into law Bill No. 200303, a temporary amendment expanding the City of Philadelphia’s paid sick leave law—officially known as the Promoting Healthy Families and Workplaces Ordinance—to establish public health emergency leave for individuals not covered by the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA).
On September 1, 2020, the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations will begin enforcing a previously-enjoined provision of the city’s Wage Equity Ordinance, which addresses the disparity in the pay of women and minorities.
On July 1, 2020, Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine signed an order expanding face covering–wearing requirements in Pennsylvania. Under the order, face coverings must now be worn almost any time an individual leaves home, including in most outdoor settings.
Philadelphia recently enacted a new city ordinance protecting whistleblowers who report unsafe workplace conditions related to COVID-19.
In Pennsylvania, noncompetition agreements must, among other things, be supported by adequate consideration to be enforceable. It is well established that an initial offer of employment constitutes adequate consideration. It is also well established that a noncompetition agreement presented to an employee after the start of employment must be supported by additional consideration, beyond the mere continuation of the employment relationship. But what about the regularly arising occurrence in which an agreement is orally agreed in connection with an initial offer, but isn’t signed until after the first day of work?
Almost every state has issued closure orders designating certain businesses as “essential” and allowing them to continue to operate during the COVID-19 pandemic. Some states have recently issued orders expressly or implicitly regulating the safety and health of workers at those essential businesses. Are some or all of the provisions in these orders preempted by the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 (OSH Act)? It depends.
On March 19, 2020, Governor Tom Wolf issued a broad executive order requiring the closure of “all businesses that are not life sustaining.” Simultaneously, the secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Health issued a similar order, explaining “the closure of non-life sustaining businesses is necessary to protect the public’s health.”
We first wrote about Philadelphia’s Fair Workweek Employment Standards Ordinance shortly after it was signed into law on December 20, 2018. Now, with the Mayor’s Office of Labor having issued final regulations on February 3, 2020, and the ordinance having taken effect on April 1, 2020, we offer a brief overview of the ordinance along with additional information for retailers as they implement procedures to comply with the ordinance’s provisions. Enforcement of some aspects of the ordinance, such as its good-faith estimates requirement, will not go into effect until July 1, 2020.
On March 19, 2020, Governor Tom Wolf issued a broad executive order requiring the closure of “all businesses that are not life sustaining.” Simultaneously, the secretary of Pennsylvania’s Department of Health issued a similar order, explaining “the closure of non-life sustaining businesses is necessary to protect the public’s health.”
California, Connecticut, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and New York have all issued statewide shelter-in-place orders in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and more states may follow. Employers that do not qualify for an exemption under the applicable state order or that decide to severely curtail or shut down operations may want to consider some of the following issues.
On January 31, 2020, the Pennsylvania Independent Regulatory Review Commission approved the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry’s (DLI) amendments to 34 Pa. Code Chapter 231, the regulations that exempt executive, administrative, and professional (“white collar”) salaried workers from overtime requirements under the Pennsylvania Minimum Wage Act of 1968.
On February 6, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit vacated U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg’s prior order partially blocking the City of Philadelphia’s pay equity ordinance from going into effect.
In late 2019, Pennsylvania defected from the traditional use of the fluctuating workweek method used to calculate overtime rates for employees working fluctuating hours.
