labor lawAdivision of labor law center

On January 1, 2009, New Jersey becomes the third state in the nation to implement a family leave insurance program. The New Jersey Paid Family Leave Act will permit employees to take paid time off to care for a sick family member. The act also provides benefits to workers who take time off to bond with newborn or newly-adopted children.

The New Jersey Family Leave Insurance program is funded by employee tax deductions. The program provides benefits to employees to partially replace income lost when they must take time from work. The law does not entitle employees to additional leave, over and above existing family leave laws such as FMLA, the federal Family and Medical Leave Act and the New Jersey Family Leave Act or NJFLA.

The New Jersey Paid Family Leave program does not guarantee that an employee will be returned to his or her job after leave; it simply provides cash benefits during the leave.

Under the new law, a New Jersey employer can require any employee to use up to two weeks of paid vacation or sick leave, or other paid leave, before going on leave. During these two weeks, (more…)

Months after the president signed the NDAA or Military Family Leave Act into law, employers are finally receiving guidelines on how to implement it.

Every employer is required to prominently display a Military Leave Notice in the workplace, under this new law.

The regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Labor go into effect on January 16, 2009 but employers would be wise to implement them now. This is because, unlike the updated FMLA regulations, the Military Family Leave regs are not replacements to existing regulations – they are the first and only regulations on this new type of leave.

Leave under the Military Family Leave Act is an extension of FMLA, or leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act.

An employee may take up to 26 weeks of military caregiver leave during a single 12-month period to care for a soldier injured on active duty. The leave can be taken (more…)

The US Department of Labor recently announced community-based worker training grants for Arkansas totaling just under $3.5 million. The President’s Community-Based Job Training Grants Initiative awarded $125 million to 69 community colleges across the United States.

The competition was announced in August of 2007, and received 341 applications. The funds go to training facilities and community colleges to aid workers in competing for high-growth industry jobs.

The two Arkansas grants go to (more…)

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs or OFCCP has updated the “Equal Employment Opportunity is The Law” poster required for nearly every employer in the US.

What are the major differences between the new poster and the older version? There are several. But the most important difference is that the EEOC and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs will no longer accept the old version of the poster. Having an old version posted is the same as having no poster on display, to these federal regulatory agencies. So each employer should update his or her poster immediately.

The new EEO or Equal Employment Opportunity poster reflects a number of changes to the law in the past year. These include changes to (more…)

The federal Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs recently updated its regulations regarding veterans. In addition, the agency has created new posting regulations for all employers under the JVA.

The new regulations are a result of the JVA, the Jobs for Veterans Act of 2002, which amended section 4212 of the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act of 1994 or VEVRAA.

The newest JVA regulations apply to employers with 50 or more employees if the employer also has either: (more…)