Welcome to Baker McKenzie’s Labor and Employment video chat series! In these quick and bite-sized video chats, our employment partners team up with practitioners in various areas of law to discuss the most pressing issues for employers navigating the return to work.
This series builds on our recent client alert and webinar on reopening for
On May 1 certain ILLINOIS employers got the green light to begin reopening, after the entry of a modified statewide stay-at-home order. Employers must require employees to maintain social distancing or must wear masks provided by the Company. We take you through the details below:
The order’s requirements for business employers depends on the type of business.
This webinar recording covers government orders, creating a timeline, workplace safety and prevention strategies, testing and health screening, labor agreements, workforce communication, managing employee concerns, and litigation mitigation.
Please see below the webinar materials as well as additional resources.
This 1-hour webinar recording covers cost-cutting strategies including, layoffs, furloughs, salary reductions, delayed start dates and revoking offers, shortened workweeks, and exit incentive programs. Each topic outlines necessary key steps and considerations.
Please see below the webinar materials as well as additional resources.
Join us Thursday, April 30 for our next COVID-19 webinar as we discuss the challenges US employers will face when bringing employees back into the workplace while maintaining appropriate safety. The webinar will cover eight key considerations for employers to address in planning for a reopening of the workplace.
We recently covered the new paid sick and family leave requirements under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) here. The FFCRA marks the first time Congress required federal paid leave for private sector workers. That is not the case at the state and municipal level, where for years, employers have had to navigate
The Department of Labor just published its first round of guidance on the FFCRA, including two fact sheets and a FAQ explaining key provisions of the paid sick leave and paid child care requirements:
The DOL also published sample FFCRA posters that federal and private employers are required to post in the workplace, as well as a FAQ on how and where to post them. Notably, emailing the posters to remote workers satisfies the posting requirements.
Importantly, DOL has elected to make the paid leave provisions of the FFCRA effective April 1, 2020, instead of the anticipated April 2 date. The DOL also announced a 30-day suspension on enforcement actions if employers attempt in good faith to comply with the FFCRA.Continue Reading New Guidance and Required Posters Issued by the DOL for Paid Sick and FMLA Leave under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA)
On Friday, March 20, 2020, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), US Department of Labor (DOL), and US Department of the Treasury published a joint news release (Release) regarding tax credits available to employers who will be required to provide paid sick and family care leave for COVID-19-related purposes under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act
Companies are permitting (or requiring) employees to work remotely right now in response to COVID-19 concerns. This decision, calculated to minimize certain risks, presents new and wide-ranging concerns for the protection of trade secrets. In this “temporary” working remotely environment, employees will have considerable opportunity to access, download, or store sensitive information from company systems and databases. Have you vetted these circumstances or otherwise addressed their use? Think – home printers? Cell phones? Tablets? Personal email accounts? Working in public places such as libraries and coffee shops? Companies may also be inclined to relax otherwise well thought out document management rules or allow for workarounds from the usual security measures in the interest of business continuity. In such an environment, employees may make assumptions that they have wider latitude to email, copy, send, print, or download information, given the circumstances. Compounding these insider risks are a series of unknowns, such as whether your employees’ home networks have security anywhere near on par with in-office network security that could allow outsiders to intrude or access data.
Trade secret litigation has grown exponentially in the United States, in part due to the passage of the Defend Trade Secrets Act (18 U.S.C. § 1836, et seq.) in 2016, and in response to the incredible value embodied in companies’ customer lists, knowhow, processes, formulas, business strategies, salary structures, and numerous other forms of intellectual property. If information is valuable, kept secret, and derives value from its secrecy, then it can be a protectable trade secret — as long as the company puts in place reasonable measures to maintain the secrecy.
Whether your company has a sophisticated trade secret protection plan in place or not, the current work environment will stress policies and procedures. Employees pose the biggest threat to securing a company’s valuable IP, and several remote-working concerns raise long-term policy questions to be addressed over time. But, the action items can’t all wait until a calmer moment. Consider the following immediate steps as your company reacts to recent events.
1. Communicate current obligations and requirements in the remote working environment
If you have a robust work-from-home policy, review it now with a specific focus on maintaining your company’s most valuable secrets. If you do not have such a policy, implement something immediately, even if it is temporary. Set clear expectations on what information the business considers to be confidential or trade secrets and what particular steps employees are required to follow when using or accessing that information. Not only does it make business sense to keep employees on notice of company policies and procedures, but federal case law under the DTSA has made clear that employees can only be held to trade secret obligations where they are specific and clear, such that employees are “on notice” of the trade secrets.
Continue Reading Keep Trade Secret Protections Top Of Mind While You Deploy Remote Working
Effective Saturday March 21 at 5:00 PM until the end of April 7, 2020, all Illinois residents are subject to a stay at home order from the Governor of Illinois. Governor Pritzker announced these measures at a 3:00 press conference today, March 20, 2020, at which he stated “I fully recognize I am choosing between
