On January 10, 2023, the Illinois legislature passed the Paid Leave for All Workers Act (the “PLFAW Act”), with an expected effective date of January 1, 2024. Illinois will join Maine and Nevada as the third state to require private employers to provide to employees earned paid leave that “may be taken by an employee for any reason of the employee’s choosing.” (For a more detailed discussion, click here).

Model Sexual Harassment Prevention Policy Updates

New York law requires employers to maintain written sexual harassment policies and the New York State Department of Labor (“DOL”) has provided employers with model policies to use as guidance.  On January 12, 2023, the New York DOL released its updated Sexual Harassment Prevention Model Policy, which makes the following changes: 

Effective September 18, 2023, employers will be required to comply with a new pay transparency law for jobs that can be performed, at least in part, in the state of New York.

The law is similar to the pay transparency statutes of New York City (see link), Westchester County and Ithaca in that the New York State law requires employers (and any agent thereof, such as an employment agency) to include a good-faith minimum and maximum pay range with any external job advertisements or internal postings for transfers and promotions, that can or will be performed, at least in part, in New York State.  Unlike the local laws, the state law expressly allows the inclusion of a fixed pay rate or salary, as opposed to a range (although the laws that require a range allow for the minimum and maximum to be the same number).  For a commission-based job, the ad or posting may simply state compensation is by commission. 

Starting February 19, 2023, employers will not be able to discipline employees for certain types of absences.  Section 215 of the New York Labor Law (NYLL) was amended to prohibit employers from taking adverse action against employees for “any legally protected absence under federal, local, or state law,” including “assessing any demerit, occurrence, or any other point, or deductions from an allotted bank of time, which subjects or could subject an employee to disciplinary action.”  Section 215 currently prohibits retaliation against employees who engage in a variety of protected activity, including making complaints about the employer’s violation of any of the provisions of the New York Labor Law, notably including an employer’s pay practices.

Electronic monitoring of employees’ remote work has increased in the last few years as employers have become concerned with employee productivity during the Covid-19 pandemic.  Monitoring technology can track the websites an employee visits and for how long, the number of keystrokes or mouse movements an employee has in a given time period, when an employee is away from their computer and even what an employee is typing, reading or watching.  Though generally legal, the use of this technology has prompted California to propose a bill aimed at, among other things, restricting employers’ use of such technology to specific times of day, activities and locations.