Regulation

New York Caps New Ride-Share Licenses, May Establish Minimum Wage for Drivers
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Aug 10, 2018 - 3:15pm
New York Caps New Ride-Share Licenses, May Establish Minimum Wage for Drivers
MikeDotta/Shutterstock.com

The New York City Council passed legislation on Wednesday to put a one-year cap on for-hire vehicle licenses and to empower the city government to set a minimum wage for ridesharing drivers, in a crackdown on the largely unregulated growth of platforms like Uber and Lyft, the New York Times reported:

The proposal to cap ride-hail companies led to a clash among interest groups with taxi industry officials saying the companies were dooming their business and Uber mounting a major advertising campaign to make the case that yellow cabs have a history of discriminating against people of color.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Corey Johnson, the City Council speaker, said the bills will curtail the worsening traffic on the streets and improve low driver wages. … But Uber has warned its riders that the cap could produce higher prices and longer wait times for passengers if the company cannot keep up with the growing demand.

New York is the largest market for Uber in the US, but already regulated ridesharing more stringently than many other American cities. To address concerns about unfair competition from the local taxi industry, New York requires drivers to obtain special licenses from the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, along with commercial liability insurance and special plates for their vehicles, which must meet certain eligibility criteria.

The new will not affect Uber and Lyft drivers who are already licensed to operate in the city, but will pause the issuing of new licenses immediately while the city studies the effects of the rise of ridesharing on traffic, driver wages, and the local economy.

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OSHA Plans to Scale Back Workplace Illness and Injury Reporting Requirements
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Aug 3, 2018 - 2:52pm
OSHA Plans to Scale Back Workplace Illness and Injury Reporting Requirements
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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration of the US Department of Labor has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that “would amend OSHA’s recordkeeping regulation by rescinding the requirement for establishments with 250 or more employees to electronically submit information from OSHA Forms 300 and 301”:

OSHA is amending its recordkeeping regulations to protect sensitive worker information from potential disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). OSHA has preliminarily determined that the risk of disclosure of this information, the costs to OSHA of collecting and using the information, and the reporting burden on employers are unjustified given the uncertain benefits of collecting the information. OSHA believes that this proposal maintains safety and health protections for workers while also reducing the burden to employers of complying with the current rule.

OSHA illness, injury, and fatality reporting rules was introduced under the Obama administration in 2014 and 2016, requiring employers to report work-related fatalities and severe injuries to the administration and later to electronically submit injury and illness information to OSHA annually. The new administration’s rationale for the regulatory change is that “the electronic collection of case-specific forms … adds uncertain enforcement value, but poses a potential privacy risk under FOIA,” the notice states.

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UK Unveils Regulation Compelling Large Firms to Disclose, Explain Pay Ratios
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Jun 12, 2018 - 12:02pm
UK Unveils Regulation Compelling Large Firms to Disclose, Explain Pay Ratios
Ink Drop/Shutterstock

Amid growing public and investor concern about major British companies potentially overpaying their top executives, the UK government has been kicking around the idea of instituting a pay ratio reporting rule since last year. The government hinted in April that it would propose the regulation soon, and now it is here. The proposal, which Business Secretary Greg Clark is presenting to Parliament today, will require all companies with more than 250 employees to disclose the ratio between the pay of their CEO and their average or median employee, as well as to explain this difference, the BBC reports:

The new rules, as well as introducing the publication of pay ratios, will also require listed companies to show what effect an increase in share prices will have on executive pay, in order to inform shareholders when voting on long-term incentive plans. … Mr Clark said: “Most of the UK’s largest companies get their business practices right, but we understand the anger of workers and shareholders when bosses’ pay is out of step with company performance.”

The plans were welcomed by the Investment Association – that represents UK investment managers – as well as business lobby group the CBI and think tank the High Pay Centre. Chris Cummings, chief executive of the Investment Association, said investors wanted greater director accountability and more transparency over executive remuneration.

That investors are leading the charge for transparency on executive compensation is unsurprising; activist investors were also key proponents of the pay ratio reporting rule that came into effect in the US earlier this year. Shareholders are voicing greater interest in exercising their “say on pay” prerogatives, particularly after recent scandals in the UK over executives receiving massive bonuses, in some cases without company performance justifying them.

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NLRB to Propose New Joint Employer Rules This Summer
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Jun 7, 2018 - 3:20pm
NLRB to Propose New Joint Employer Rules This Summer
Joseph Sohm/Shutterstock.com

The US National Labor Relations Board intends to take the first step toward creating a new regulation regarding the definition of “joint employers” for federal regulatory purposes by the end of this summer, NLRB Chairman John F. Ring wrote in a letter to three Senators this week. The letter to Democrats Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, and Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, was in response to a letter the legislators had sent to the board chairman expressing their concerns about the board’s intent to introduce a new joint employer standard through the federal rulemaking process.

“A majority of the Board is committed to engage in rulemaking,” Ring wrote in the letter dated June 5, “and the NLRB will do so. Internal preparations are underway, and we are working toward issuance of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) as soon as possible, but certainly by this summer.”

The joint employer standard, which refers to an organization’s liability for the work conditions of individuals employed by its contractors or subcontractors, was expanded considerably during the Obama administration, when the NLRB ruled in a 2015 case called Browning-Ferris that a company was to be considered a joint employer if it had “indirect” control over the subcontractor’s terms and conditions of employment or “reserved authority” to exercise such control. The board reversed that decision in the Hy-Brand case decided late last year, but vacated its Hy-Brand ruling in February after one member of the board who participated in that decision, William Emanuel, was found to have a conflict of interest.

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Careful Who You Trust for GDPR Advice
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Jun 1, 2018 - 2:15pm
Careful Who You Trust for GDPR Advice
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The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, which went into effect on May 25, imposes new data privacy obligations on all organizations that process the data of EU citizens, whether or not they are based in Europe themselves. The maximum penalties for noncompliance are hefty, so it is essential for businesses to ensure that their practices are GDPR-compliant if they haven’t already.

According to a survey on the eve of the regulation coming into effect, however, most organizations have not yet finished making the required changes, while many do not expect to be fully compliant by the end of this year. Much work still remains to be done to bring organizations into initial compliance with the regulation, and still more work to re-develop data collection, storage, and analytics programs in a compliant manner.

With every organization doing a huge amount of work for the first time and trying to get right with the GDPR as quickly as possible, this makes for a fertile environment for bad information to circulate and for opportunists to take advantage of organizations’ unfamiliarity with the new regulatory terrain. Organizational leaders need to be vigilant about which “experts” to trust for guidance on GDPR compliance, take advantage of the information provided directly by the European Commission, and bear in mind that different functions, particularly HR, face unique compliance challenges.

Step 1: Beware of Charlatans

The proliferation of bad advice and information is a simple matter of supply and demand. Demand for advice is high, both because of the global impact of the GDPR and because so many organizations were not proactive in planning for compliance are now scrambling to catch up. The supply of that advice is scarce and of uneven quality, with no historical track record of performance. Over the past few months, many companies have been assembling data protection functions and hiring data protection officers (DPOs), causing a run on the thin supply of qualified talent for these roles.

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Uber to Provide European Drivers with Paid Leave, Injury Insurance
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May 24, 2018 - 1:40pm
Uber to Provide European Drivers with Paid Leave, Injury Insurance
Creativan/Shutterstock.com

Uber is rolling out new benefits for drivers working through its platform in Europe, including sick pay, paid parental and bereavement leave, and compensation for work-related injuries, the BBC reported this week:

The insurance and compensation package will be available to all Uber drivers and Uber Eats delivery couriers across Europe. However, unions have questioned whether the package is new. In April 2017, Uber announced illness and injury insurance cover for its drivers. Uber drivers who wanted to join the scheme were required to pay £2 a week. …

Uber will provide drivers with a range of insurance coverage and compensation resulting from accidents or injuries that occur while they are working, as well as protection for “major life events” that happen whether the driver is on a shift or not. … Drivers are not going to get the kind of benefits they would enjoy as employees but there will be a little something to help them deal with life’s ups and downs.

The announcement comes just a month before an appeals hearing in a London court regarding Transport for London’s decision last September to revoke Uber’s license to operate as a private car hire operator in the city, on the basis that its “approach and conduct demonstrate a lack of corporate responsibility.” Uber has been allowed to continue operating in London while it appeals the decision, as it is scheduled to do at Westminster Magistrates Court on June 25, the BBC notes.

The battle with Transport for London is just one of several Uber is fighting in the UK and continental Europe. Last November, the company lost an appeal against a ruling by a British employment tribunal that its drivers were misclassified as independent contractors and are in fact entitled to certain rights as employees, including paid leave, overtime, and a minimum wage. Uber contends that classifying its drivers as employees would fatally disturb its business model and prevent it from offering the flexibility in terms of work hours and location that most of its drivers consider a benefit. Critics contend that this is a false choice and that Uber could maintain that flexibility while offering drivers a fuller range of rights and protections. Uber is pursuing further appeals in that case.

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Labor Department May Ease up on Federal Contractor Pay Discrimination Investigations
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May 17, 2018 - 4:01pm
Labor Department May Ease up on Federal Contractor Pay Discrimination Investigations
US Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta (Shawn T Moore/Department of Labor/Flickr)

Last month, Bloomberg BNA’s Ben Penn and Porter Wells reported that the US Department of Labor was planning to relax a policy put in place by the Obama administration to vigorously enforce regulations prohibiting gender pay discrimination by organizations that contract with the federal government. The department was said to be issuing new guidance to supplant a 2013 directive that had given the Office of Federal Contract Compliance a mandate to audit federal contractors for salary bias and make its own determinations as to whether workers were employed in identical or comparable roles for that purpose.

The OFCCP had used that directive to force substantial settlements from several large employers over alleged pay discrimination, and it has been at the center of the ongoing dispute between the Labor Department and Google over pay discrepancies the office has said indicate widespread discrimination (Google vigorously denies this and claims to have no statistically significant gender pay gap at all).

The new guidance, Penn and Wells explained, would “allow businesses to shape the random Labor Department audits by determining which workers investigators should be comparing for possible pay bias” instead. This change would be in keeping with Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta’s approach of assuming good faith on the part of businesses and allowing them to admit and correct compliance issues without fault rather than pursuing investigations and lawsuits. After these plans came to light, however, the department may be backtracking, Allen Smith reports at SHRM. Mickey Silberman, an attorney with Fortney & Scott in Denver, tells Smith that the OFCCP, Labor Department, and various stakeholders are now discussing the proposed changes.

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