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Shawn Fabian is a partner in the Labor and Employment Practice Group in the firm's Chicago and New York offices.

On March 20, 2020, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker issued a mandatory “Stay-at-Home” Order, located here, directing all Illinois residents to stay home or at their place of residence.  The Order takes effect beginning Saturday, March 21, 2020 at 5:00 p.m. CDT and will last through Tuesday, April 7, 2020.  Under this Order, all public and private gatherings occurring outside a single household or living unit are prohibited.  Following current guidance from the CDC, the Order prohibits any gathering of more than 10 people unless otherwise exempted.  Further, all places of public amusement, whether indoors or outdoors, must now be closed to the public during the pendency of the Order.

 Coronavirus, Stay-at-Home
Continue Reading Illinois Statewide Stay at Home Order: What Employers Need to Know

The New Year brings new laws for Illinois employers. Some laws go into effect this Summer, while others are effective as of this month. For employers who have not yet revised handbooks, policies and agreements, the time is now. Below is a brief summary of the new laws.
Continue Reading The Time Is Now for Employers in Illinois to Abide by New Laws

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is expected to sign into law the City Council’s recently passed Chicago Fair Workweek Ordinance (the “Ordinance”).  The Ordinance, which includes predictable scheduling provisions, will dramatically affect workweek scheduling for many Chicago employers beginning on July 1, 2020.

We previously wrote about Emeryville, California’s Fair Workweek Ordinance.  Emeryville became the third municipality to enact predictive scheduling legislation (Seattle and San Francisco being the others).  In an effort to enact “fair and equitable employment scheduling practices”, the Chicago City Council now passed its own Ordinance, which requires certain Covered employers (as defined below) to provide Covered employees (as defined below) with at least two weeks’ advance notice of their work schedules and to compensate employees in the event of certain schedule changes.
Continue Reading Predictable Scheduling Makes Its Way To Chicago

Last August, we wrote about a Chicago ordinance requiring hotel employers to, among other things, equip hotel employees assigned to work in guestrooms or restrooms with portable emergency contact devices. The emergency contact devices, referred to as “panic buttons,” may be used to summon help if the employee reasonably believes that an ongoing crime, sexual harassment, sexual assault or other emergency is occurring in the employee’s presence. The Chicago ordinance took effect July 1, 2018.
Continue Reading “Panic Button” Laws Make Their Way Across The U.S.

In the aftermath of the Illinois Supreme Court’s Rosenbach decision, Illinois employers have faced a wave of class action litigation filed under the Biometric Information Privacy Act (“BIPA”). Employers hoping for relief from the statute’s private right of action must wait for another day (or another session) as Senate Bill 2134 (“SB 2134”) did not report out of committee by the March 28, 2019 deadline.
Continue Reading The Potential For Stemming BIPA Suits Waits Another Day

In an effort to continue to raise awareness of human trafficking and provide available services to victims, beginning October 14, 2018, lodging facilities in New York State were required to provide informational cards in certain public spaces of the facilities.

Specifically, a recently enacted New York statute adds a section to the general business law, and requires every lodging facility to make informational cards available in plain view in the public restrooms, individual guest rooms, and near the public entrance or other conspicuous place in plain sight of the guests and employees. The legislature reasoned that the discrete size of an informational card may make it possible for a victim to take a card unnoticed and use the card to call the hotline for help at a later time.
Continue Reading New York Lodging Industry: Post Your Human Trafficking Informational Cards

Last October, we wrote about a Chicago ordinance requiring hotel employers to, among other things, equip hotel employees assigned to work in guestrooms or restrooms with portable emergency contact devices. The ordinance took effect July 1, 2018. Hotel employers in Chicago should ensure compliance with the mandates of the ordinance as penalties may reach $500 for each offense. Each day a violation continues is deemed a new offense.
Continue Reading Hands Off-Pants On Ordinance In Effect in Chicago; California May Be Next

This post originally appeared in Law360 on June 14, 2018.

Earlier this year, the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration Standards Board and Office of Administrative Law approved a “Hotel Housekeeping Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention Program” that may result in sweeping changes to hospitality employers’ written policies and training practices concerning workplace injuries. The regulations take effect July 1, 2018, and affected employers have until Oct. 1, 2018, to complete their initial “work site evaluation.”Continue Reading Preparing For New Calif. Hotel Housekeeper Regs

In an effort to curb workplace violence against healthcare workers, The Joint Commission, a national healthcare accreditation body, recently issued seven actions healthcare organizations are encouraged to implement.
Continue Reading Healthcare Organizations Take Notice: The Joint Commission Issues Recommendations to Stem Workplace Violence

Several states have recently enacted modifications to their respective non-compete laws or have legislation in the pipeline. Most continue the trend of limiting enforceability of non-competes, which are agreements between an employee and employer where the employee agrees not to enter into competition with the employer following the employee’s termination of employment. In this two-part series, we first examine recently enacted employee-friendly non-compete laws in Utah and Idaho and certain efforts to ban non-competes, including those in Vermont and Pennsylvania. In part two of this blog, we will examine the practical application of these recently enacted and proposed laws, and further examine the trend of limiting enforceability of non-competes.
Continue Reading Utah and Idaho Limit Non-Competes and Vermont and Pennsylvania Work to Ban Them