labor lawAdivision of labor law center

Three Minnesota community colleges will receive more than $5 million to train workers in the fastest-growing industries, thanks to recent US Department of Labor grants. The schools beat out more than 200 other applicants to win the highly competitive grants from the ETA, the federal Employee Training Administration.

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Surprisingly, Advanced Manufacturing is one of the fastest-growing industries in Utah and the US. Highly skilled workers in the field command good salaries, and have excellent career growth to supervisory and management positions.

Manufacturing jobs were once considered boring and repetitive. Today, employees are likely to be using delicate equipment to produce highly specialized products.

Manufacturing is growing as fast as other “hot” industries, including biotechnology, healthcare and energy.

In fact, employers have trouble finding enough qualified workers for the manufacturing positions available. That’s why the US Department of Labor recently awarded two grants totaling almost $4 million in Utah. Two community colleges, in partnership with local employers, will train workers with the necessary skills.

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Several acts of violence in the workplace have occurred in recent months merely reinforce OSHA recommendations.

OSHA reports that incidents of workplace homicide have declined in recent years, from a high of 200+ in the early 1990s to 96 in 2006. However, homicide is still one of the most common causes of fatal injuries at work.

Every Utah employer needs a plan to prevent workplace violence, and an emergency response protocol. OSHA even recommends that employers have “violence drills” the same way they conduct “fire drills.”

On February 2, an armed man attempted to rob a Lane Bryant store in Tinley Park, Illinois (Chicago suburb). Six women were in the store, including two women who walked in during the robbery attempt. The gunman forced them into the back room where he bound them with duct tape.

The store manager, however, had managed to call 911 during the robbery. When the gunman learned of the call, he went berserk and shot all six women. A police officer was nearby and arrived on the scene within one minute, but the shooter had already fled. Of the 6 women, 5 were dead. The one woman who survived provided a description of the killer. Police distributed a composite sketch and began searching for the suspect.

Six city council members were attacked by an armed political activist on February 7, in Kirkwood Missouri. The gunman, who had been ejected from two previous council meetings, burst in and opened fire. The mayor was wounded, but survived. Unfortunately, the other five members, three city officials and two police officers, were killed.

A gunman on the campus of Northern Illinois University (NIU) in DeKalb, Illinois broke into a lecture hall and shot 22 people on February 14. Of the 22, 16 were injured and 6 were killed. The shooter, a former graduate student at NIU, then turned the gun on himself.

The shooter, Steven Kazmierczak, had just transferred to another Illinois University graduate school to study social work. His professors described him as a calm, award-winning student. Police reports described him as irritable and unpredictable, because he’d been off his medications for three weeks. Jessica Baty, Kazmierczak’s girlfriend, insisted he was simply stressed from school, but not abnormally so.

These incidents are tragic evidence of the need for companies to establish safety measures against violence at work. These safety measures must include training for managers and employees on how to respond when violence occurs, and what steps can help prevent future violent acts in the workplace.

Recently, tragic episodes of workplace violence occurred in Missouri and Illinois. They are not, however, the only such cases. In 2007, several episodes occurred, including the massacre at Virginia Tech.

The Virginia Tech episode remains the worst such tragedy in 2007. In that shooting, a heavily armed young man killed 32 students and staff and wounded another 17 before fatally turning his weapon on himself as police officers moved in on him. The young man, Seung-Hui Cho, had chained the doors of a campus building shut before opening fire.

At the University of Wisconsin Madison a man attempted “suicide by cop’” hoping to provoke a shootout with police that would leave him dead, law enforcement officers said. The man threatened to blow up a nearby hospital and fired shots near the building on September 25. The bomb threat was later discovered to be false.

OSHA, (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) said the shooter demonstrated many of the danger signs of impending workplace violence. Cho was not seeking treatment for his history of mental problems. He had an unhealthy interest in weapons, and had a tendency to developed what have been called irrational crushes on women who were hardly known to them. Once developing the crushes, he would engage in stalker-like behavior and become jealous. Cho would go into fits of rage.

On January 28, 2008, President George W. Bush signed the HR 4986 the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). A provision of the NDAA expands the FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) from 12 weeks to 26 weeks for military families in some cases, including families of National Guard and Reserve personnel who are on active duty.

Under the NDAA, every employer in Utah and nationwide must post the Military Family Leave notice.

The law went into effect immediately, so employers must grant leave to family members who need to care for an injured solider, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Before this NDAA, family was defined by FMLA as parent, spouse or child. The 2008 NDAA extends this definition to also include aunts, uncles, cousins and in-laws.

The 2008 NDAA updates the FMLA rules, so employers are required to immediately post a notice of this new Military Family Leave in a permanent position, visible to all employees. The U. S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division is in charge of enforcing this law. Any employer who does not comply will face penalties.

One of the points of expanding the FMLA is to allow families to care for a son, daughter or spouse who is active military, National Guard or Reserve and is under medical care. Treatments covered under the FMLA included mental or physical therapy, outpatient treatments and care for personnel who are temporarily disabled due to illness or injury.

The other point of expanding the FMLA is to allow family members to stand in for military personnel who are caring for others. To illustrate, consider a single father called to active duty. One of his family members could take FMLA leave in order to care for his healthy children. Or consider a soldier whose wife is ill. Family members could take FMLA to care for her while he’s on active duty.

Though the law went into effect in January, not all of the NDAA regulations have been finalized. Until the Secretary of Labor issues the final regulations, employers are expected to “act in good faith” and grant leave to eligible military families.

In the beginning of 2008, President Bush signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law. The 2008 NDAA will expand FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) for the first time since its enactment in 1993.

Final NDAA regulations, however, have not been published. The U. S. Department of Labor hopes to issues these regulations in the near future.

Two changes went into effect on February 11, 2008. The medical certification process was updated, and the time frame allowed for employers to notify workers of their FMLA rights was revised.

One major change revises the procedure for reporting an FMLA absence. Prior to the updates, a worker did not have to give advance notice before taking time off. The new revisions will require workers to follow their company’s “usual and customary” procedure for taking leave. Usually, that means the employee must notify the company prior to the beginning of his or her shift.

These changes clarify an already ground-breaking law. The FMLA guarantees workers with a serious illness that they can take leave (unpaid, up to 12 weeks per year) and still have a job. If an employee develops an illness, he or she can take leave and still have a job when they return. Usually it’s the same job, but can also be a position with comparable pay, benefits, working conditions and duties.

FMLA can be used, too, so employees can care for family members (child, parent or spouse) with a serious illness. Plus, caring for a newborn child, a child newly adopted or a child newly fostered can be charged to FMLA leave.

Prior to FMLA, if a worker took time off for an illness, he or she usually got fired. Companies handled each case individually, and policies varied widely among employers.

Now employees are guaranteed a job, but not all employees are eligible for FMLA. Companies must have 50 or more workers within a 75 mile radius of the work location, and employees must have logged at least 1,250 hours over the previous 12 months at that company.

The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) has been expanded for relatives and spouses of active duty military personnel.

The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was signed into law Jan. 28, 2008 by President George W. Bush. The NDAA, also known as HR 4986, guarantees 26 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave.

The bill was effective immediately, which means that military families were guaranteed the expansion as of that date. So employers must start granting the leave now to family members.

The FMLA traditionally guarantees workers 12 weeks of the unpaid and job protected leave annually.

The NDAA is also expanding the FMLA to “next of kin,” which could include in-laws, cousins, aunts, and uncles of soldiers.

The U.S. Labor Department began developing regulations based on the new law as soon as it was signed. While it is drawing those rules up, the Labor Department is expecting employers to act in good faith in attempting to comply. While details are sketchy, the Labor Department plans to publish more information as it becomes available.

The NDAA allows a child, parent, or “next of kin” to care for a member of the armed forces, National Guard or Reserve who is undergoing medical treatment. That might include outpatient treatment, undergoing mental or physical therapy, or recuperation. It may also mean caring for a soldier who is on what is called the temporary disability retired list. The list is for persons suffering a serious illness or injury.

An employee may take 26 weeks for “any qualifying exigency” resulting from the fact that a parent, spouse, or child is on active duty, or even if he or she has been notified that impending duty is imminent. It appears that this will cover time off to care for a child or children if a family member is deployed, but the details are unclear at this time. On the one hand, this supposedly does not go into effect until the Labor Secretary issues a definition of “qualifying exigency.” On the other hand, the Labor Department encourages the leave to be offered immediately.

Utah workers, like workers throughout the U.S., are covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, or FMLA.

A new measure called the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2008 expands the FMLA for military personnel. Otherwise, the law has not changed since it was first passed. Regulations about the new NDAA have not been finished by the U.S. Labor Department, so details are not clear yet.

The FMLA provides as much as 12 weeks of unpaid leave in a 12-month period. The time can be used not only if the employee is seriously ill, but if a member of his or her immediate family has serious health problems. Workers can take the time to care for a son, daughter, spouse, or parent, but not a grandparent, in-law, or sibling.

An employee may also take the time off to care for or bond with a newborn child, a newly adopted child, or a new foster child who is under 18 years old. FMLA has become the most common form of “maternity” or “paternity” leave in the country.

Because the leave is job protected, workers must be given the same or a similar job when they return to work. If it is impossible to reinstate the worker in the original job, then it must be one with similar pay, conditions, duties, and benefits.

Employers are permitted, under some conditions, to count paid leave time - sick time or Paid Time Off (PTO) - against the 12 weeks of FMLA leave. But the employee must be notified in writing before the leave time begins.

The FMLA’s laws apply to any company with 50 or more employees within a 75-mile radius. Some states have expanded that to include smaller firms. And some states have enlarged the coverage to include care for other relatives besides members of the immediate family.