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The US Department of Labor has released a new version of its “Employee Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA)” Minimum Wage poster. The poster has been changed to incorporate recent changes made under the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers (PUMP) Act. This law expands the rights of nursing employees to take breaks and have a private place to express breast milk during the workday. Because of those changes, prior versions of this poster are no longer compliant and must be replaced with the newest version.
While we have your attention, we recommend walking over to see if you have the newest April 2023 update to the DOL’s Your Employee Rights Under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) poster (assuming the FMLA applies to your company). The April 2016 and February 2013 versions remain compliant, though as a best practice, employers should consider posting the most recent version as soon as possible.
There was also an October 2022 change to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Know Your Rights: Workplace Discrimination is Illegal poster. However, more changes are expected toward the end of June 2023, so if you buy your posters, you may want to wait to purchase an updated poster then. In the meantime, you can post the temporary FLSA poster linked above alongside any all-in-one posters you may already have posted.
Employers with remote employees may be wondering how the employees that don’t visit the office communal spaces are expected to see these posters. The DOL has helpfully prepared Field Assistance Bulletin No 2020-7, which addresses the need to post required notices electronically. In brief, where an employer has employees on-site and working remotely, the employer should supplement the hard-copy posting requirement with an electronic posting where (1) affected individuals must be capable of accessing the electronic posting without having to specifically request permission to view the file or access a computer, and (2) the employer takes steps to inform employees of where and how to access the electronic notice. In a practical sense, this means you may email downloaded PDF copies of these policies to off-site employees or, once you post the updated posters, simply take a photograph of the postings and circulate that photo to all employees.
Complying with posting requirements may seem straightforward; the law requires certain information to be posted for employees to see, so we post the information in the break room and carry on with our day. However, in the real world, once some of those posters go up, they may not get looked at very often. Here is a friendly reminder to look at what you have on your walls, and if your bulletin board happens to include information from the Reagan era, now is the time for an update.
All the posters referred to in this update can be found by clicking the links above. The Department of Labor posters, along with a helpful primer for businesses, can also be found here: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/posters.
While the above refers to postings required by the federal government, we cannot forget the laws specific to the State of California that require separate and additional workplace postings and are also worth looking at now. Workplace posters specific to California can be found here: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/RequiredPosters.html.
If you read this and realize you that you have your poster game on point, we recommend a well-earned pat on the back. If you don’t quite fit in that category, we wish you good speed in your poster redecorating.
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