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Poultry Plant Raids: The Rest of the Story
On August 7, 2019, seven food processing plants in Mississippi were the subject of “raids" conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  The Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the raids had been planned for approximately a year.  In some respects, such raids are hardly news:  ICE conducted enforcement actions for many ye...
woman using a computer indoors near window
After what must be record-setting deliberations, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has published plans to raise the salary threshold – the amount a salaried administrative, executive, or professional employee must be paid in order to qualify as exempt from overtime – from $455 per week ($23,660 annually) to $679 per week ($35,308 annually). This is the m...
usb drive
On January 24, 2019, OSHA issued a notice in the Federal Register (84 FR 380) amending the recordkeeping regulation by rescinding the requirement for establishments with 250 or more employees to electronically submit information from OSHA Forms 300 and 301. These establishments will continue to be required to maintain those records on-site, and OSHA will ...
Employment Items to Consider for Early 2019
Because of the enormous increase in legal claims and disputes over the past few years, Wimberly & Lawson suggests that employers should consider the following projects in early 2019 as they are quite important and timely.  Wimberly & Lawson would be pleased to provide fixed fee estimates for each project or otherwise advise employers in these impo...
New Georgia Department of Labor Initiative Supports Immigration Compliance
Effective January 1, 2019, the Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) will reject Quarterly Tax and Wage Reports containing certain invalid Social Security numbers (SSN) and may assess delinquency fees against employers failing to submit complete or correct reports by the due date.  However, an employer submitting a corrected report after the due date when it...
written list
In a decision, USA v. Mar-Jac Poultry, Inc., published October 9, 2018, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed a District Court decision quashing an inspection warrant that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had sought to expand a limited incident inspection to a “wall-to-wall” examination ...
poultry plant
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) promulgated regulations in 2007 for the purpose of preventing access by terrorists to chemical facilities that manufacture, store or use chemicals of interest (COI).  The regulations are titled “Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards” and can be found at 6 C.F.R. Part 27. Poultry processing companies are subj...
ICE Conducts "Old-Fashioned" Raid of Tennessee Meat Packing Plant
Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials on April 5, 2018 conducted a "raid" on a meat packing plant in Bean Station, Tennessee, near Knoxville.  One distinction between a "raid" and an "inspection" is that a raid is accompanied by a warrant that requires immediate access to the property.  An inspection or audit in contrast begins when a busi...
check with a pen on it
On March 6, 2018, the Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor (WHD) announced a pilot program designed to expedite resolution of payroll errors.  Dubbed with the convenient acronym PAID, the Payroll Audit Independent Determination program will allow employers to correct inadvertent overtime and minimum wage violations without having to pay ...
sparklers, outdoors
Effective immediately, the U.S. Department of Labor raised Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) penalties by 2%.  In a notice published in the Federal Register on Tuesday, January 2, 2018 (Vol. 83, No. 1).  DOL said it was increasing 2018 penalties to comply with the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act Improvements Act of 2015...
U.S. President Barack Obama, accompanied by members of Congress and middle school children, waves as he talks on the phone from the Roosevelt Room of the White House to astronauts on the International Space Station.
In a June 7, 2017 news release, U.S. Secretary of Labor (DOL) Alexander Acosta announced the withdrawal of informal guidance issued in 2015 and 2016 on joint employment and independent contractors.  No statutes or regulations are repealed or amended, and case law isn’t affected, but the change means that DOL is abandoning the previous Administration’s exp...