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Thirty-nine states and the District of Columbia added construction jobs between May 2018 and May 2019, while construction employment increased in 31 states and D.C. from April to May, according to an analysis by the Associated General Contractors of America of Labor Department data released today. Association officials said the new construction employment data underscores the need for new federal investments in career and technical education programs as well as immigration reform.

Employers may be surprised to learn that the National Labor Relations Board (the “Board” or “NLRB”) just issued a unanimous decision invalidating an employer’s mandatory arbitration agreement that could be reasonably interpreted as preventing employees from filing charges with the Board. The June 18 Prime Healthcare decision analyzed the employer’s arbitration agreement using the relatively new Boeing Co. standard for evaluating facially neutral policies and rules that potentially interfere with employees’ protected rights, but fell on the side of the workers. The Prime Healthcare decision may require you to adjust your arbitration agreements.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards (“OLMS”) recently made technical changes to the poster that federal contractors and subcontractors are required to display under Executive Order 13496. The poster informs employees of their rights under the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”). The Department updated the poster to reflect a new telephone number for the National Labor Relations Board, the agency responsible for enforcing the NLRA, and to provide contact information for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. No other changes or updates were made at this time.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently announce that after June 14, 2019, www.WDOL.gov will be transitioning to https://beta.SAM.gov, which will become the new website for wage determination data.

On May 21, �ԹϺ����� submitted comments to the U. S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) in response to a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) updating the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) overtime regulations. In line with �ԹϺ�����’s recommendations to the WHD, this NPRM is the second step the DOL is undertaking to revisit the Obama administration overtime rule that dramatically increased the salary threshold for exempt employees and would have resulted in unintended consequences, particularly for small construction companies construction employers in lower-wage regions, and construction personnel. In contrast to the Obama rule, this new proposal would simply update the salary threshold using current wage data, projected to January 1, 2020. The result would boost the standard salary threshold for exempt employees from $455 to $679 per week (equivalent to $35,308 per year).

Advises Caution in Selection and Execution of New Compliance Checks

On June 12, �ԹϺ����� submitted comments to the U. S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Wage and Hour Division (WHD) in response to its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) updating the regulations governing regular rate requirements for the first time in more than 50 years. Regular rate requirements define what forms of payment employers include and exclude in the "time and one-half" calculation when determining workers' overtime rates. The NPRM focused primarily on clarifying whether certain kinds of perks, benefits, or other miscellaneous items must be included in the regular rate. Because these regulations have not been updated in decades, the proposal’s intent is to better define the regular rate for today's workplace practices.

Expands Employer and Employee Insurance Options

Construction employment increased by 4,000 jobs in May and by 215,000, or 3.0 percent, over the past 12 months, while the number of unemployed jobseekers with construction experience fell to a record low, according to an analysis of new government data by the Associated General Contractors of America. Association officials said that an extremely tight job market, rather than softening demand for projects, probably explains the modest employment increase in May.

The most recent Unified Agenda, released in late May, demonstrates that a robust agenda of regulatory reform continues as a theme of this Administration, yet it also shows little movement in the relevant policy �ԹϺ����� has been tracking.