Labor Law Posters: Updates and Proper Placement. Are You Sure You’re In Compliance?
Like many employers, you obtained your federal and state labor law posters and hung them in the employee break room and assumed you met the requirements. In many instances, you may not be in compliance and your company could be subjected to fines and other penalties. What may seem like such a simple procedure, is actually rather complex, particularly given today’s work environments and continually changing legal language. Learn some of the common mistakes and how you can correct them.
Postings for All Employees
Your labor law posters, must be in a conspicuous place available to and frequented by all employees on a daily basis. So if your workforce is spread throughout several separate department areas, over multiple floors and/or in various buildings, you will need to hang sets of posters in break rooms for each department, on each floor and/or in each building, not simply your main break room. If you have employees who’s native language is Spanish, you are also required to post a second set of both your State and Federal labor law posters in Spanish. Numerous states have Spanish versions of their labor law posters available including: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Washington.
If you have employees that work off site or who telecommute from home, you may also need to provide them with individual posters or separate copies of the current law/act. Many of the laws require a specific size font, display copy and/or orientation for the posting (e.g. OSHA Job Safety and Health official poster is 12.5″ x 17.5″ portrait presentation), so you cannot make a reduced photo copy or electronic copy of your posters and simply fax or email them in order to comply.
Postings for Employees, Applicants and Representatives of Labor Organizations
A few of the Federal Labor Laws require that they be posted not only in a place frequented by employees, but also in a place that applicants or labor organization representatives can view them. The laws with these requirements include The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA), The Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and The Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA).
Maintaining Up-to-Date Copies of Each Law or Act
Each year, there are roughly 2-3 changes to both the State and Federal Labor Laws. Some of these changes are made in one year and do not take effect until January 1st, of the following year thereby making them much easier to track. However, a number of updates to labor laws are passed and take effect in the same year.
Your company is required to post these updates once they are made available by the governing body responsible for maintaining the law. Trying to following bills as they pass through each division of government and various stages and then determining their true effective date can be an incredibly challenging task for any employer. That is why many employers choose to subscribe to poster update services, such as the Labor Law Poster Compliance program offered by Checkmate Workforce Management Solutions to our clients.
As with many other compliance requirements involving your workforce, ensuring that you are not simply completing the task, but doing so in the specific manner outlined can make all the difference. Make certain you are taking the right steps to establish and maintain compliance for your Labor Law Posters in order to avoid significant fines and other potential penalties.