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After Pandemic, Shrinking Need for Office Space Could Crush Landlords
Some big employers are giving up square footage as they juggle remote work. That could devastate building owners and cities. More
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Returning to the Office Sparks Anxiety and Dread for Some
After a year of working remotely, some employees are not keen to go back to the office, and, so far, employers are being receptive to their concerns. More
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Biden Tells OSHA to Issue New Covid-19 Guidance to Employers
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Biden AdministrationliveLatest UpdatesBiden Takes OfficePandemic Response17 Executive Orders SignedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBiden Tells OSHA to Issue New Covid-19 Guidance to EmployersUnions, which largely support the new president, had complained that the Trump administration did little to protect workers from the coronavirus.Carolina Sanchez, left, whose husband died after contracting Covid-19 while working at a meatpacking plant, is comforted at a protest outside the Occupational Safety and Health Administration office in Denver last September.Credit…David Zalubowski/Associated PressJan. 21, 2021Updated 6:37 p.m. ETPresident Biden directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Thursday to release new guidance to employers on protecting workers from Covid-19.In one of 10 executive orders that he signed Thursday, the president asked the agency to step up enforcement of existing rules to help stop the spread of the coronavirus in the workplace and to explore issuing a new rule requiring employers to take additional precautions.The other executive orders also relate to the pandemic, including orders directing federal agencies to issue guidance for the reopening of schools and to use their powers to accelerate the production of protective equipment and expand access to testing.Critics accused OSHA, which is part of the Labor Department, of weak oversight under former President Donald J. Trump, especially in the last year, when it relaxed record-keeping and reporting requirements related to Covid-19 cases.Under Mr. Trump, the agency also announced that it would mostly refrain from inspecting workplaces outside of a few high-risk industries like health care and emergency response. And critics complained that its appetite for fining employers was limited. Mr. Biden’s executive order urges the agency to target “the worst violators,” according to a White House fact sheet.Union officials and labor advocacy groups have long pleaded with the agency to issue a rule, known as an emergency temporary standard, laying out steps that employers must take to protect workers from the coronavirus. The agency declined to do so under Mr. Trump, but Mr. Biden supported the approach during the campaign.“We talked about a national standardized strategy for working men and women in this country to function under this cloud of the pandemic,” Rory Gamble, the president of the United Automobile Workers union, said after a meeting with Mr. Biden in mid-November. “He indicated he would do whatever it took.”OSHA’s oversight of the meatpacking industry under Mr. Trump attracted particular scrutiny from labor groups and scholars. A study published in the fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences connected between 236,000 and 310,000 Covid-19 cases to livestock processing plants through late July, or between 6 percent and 8 percent of the national total at that point.That figure is roughly 50 times the 0.15 percent of the U.S. population that works in meatpacking plants, according to the study, suggesting that the industry played an outsized role in spreading the illness.The study found that a majority of the Covid-19 cases linked to meatpacking plants had likely originated in the plants and then spread through surrounding communities.The Biden AdministrationLive UpdatesUpdated Jan. 21, 2021, 7:22 p.m. ETFauci offers reassurances on vaccines, but warns that virus variants pose a risk.Biden is invoking the Defense Production Act. Here’s what that means.The No. 2 official at the F.B.I. is departing.Despite the problems identified by the study, the Trump administration did not include meatpacking plants in the category of workplaces that OSHA should regularly inspect. Only a small fraction of the roughly $4 million in coronavirus-related penalties that the agency proposed under Mr. Trump targeted the industry. Fines for any given plant were generally below $30,000.The Labor Department under Mr. Trump said it had assessed the maximum fines allowed under the law. But former OSHA officials have said that the agency can impose bigger fines by citing facilities for multiple violations, which could raise proposed penalties to over $100,000.Even when it did inspect meatpacking plants and propose fines, OSHA rarely required these employers to place workers six feet apart, the distance recommended by its own guidance.During a court case involving a plant in Pennsylvania whose workers complained last year that they were in imminent danger because of the risk of infection, OSHA wrote in a letter on Jan. 12 that it was OK with spacing at the plant, even though some workers were spaced less than six feet apart. Separately, union officials at two other plants where OSHA issued citations said workers continued to stand close to one another after the citations.Debbie Berkowitz, a senior OSHA official during the Obama administration who is now at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, said she expected the Biden administration to issue a rule requiring meatpacking facilities to space workers six feet apart and mandating other safety measures, such as providing high-quality masks and improving ventilation and sanitation at their facilities.“OSHA had been sidelined under Trump,” said Ms. Berkowitz. “This is a signal they’re going to play a significant role in mitigating the spread of Covid-19,” she added, alluding to Mr. Biden’s executive order.The Biden administration is likely to revisit a wide variety of labor and employment issues from the Trump era, including a rule that would make it harder for employees of franchises and contractors to recover wages that were improperly withheld from them, and another rule that would likely classify Uber drivers and other gig workers as contractors rather than employees.On Wednesday, the new administration fired the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, a Senate-confirmed official who has wide latitude over which labor law violations the board pursues. The official, Peter B. Robb, was appointed by Mr. Trump and clashed frequently with unions.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
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Did You Miss Out on Vacation This Year? You’re Not Alone
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Stimulus PlanVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineCredit…Jackson GibbsSkip to contentSkip to site indexDid You Miss Out on Vacation This Year? You’re Not AloneEmployers are struggling to deal with the unused days that have piled up during the pandemic.Credit…Jackson GibbsSupported byContinue reading the main storyDec. 28, 2020Updated 6:52 p.m. ETIn a typical year, New York employees of the magazine publisher Condé Nast must use their vacation days before late December or lose them — a common policy across corporate America.But early this month, the company sent employees an email saying they could carry up to five vacation days into next year, an apparent acknowledgment that many scrimped on days off amid the long hours and travel restrictions imposed by the pandemic. “The carry-over will be automatic, and there is nothing further you need to do,” the email said.Condé Nast was not alone in scrambling to make end-of-year arrangements for vacation-deprived workers. Some employers, however, have been less accommodating.“It’s a big issue we’re seeing now — competing requests for time off over the next two weeks,” said Allan S. Bloom, an employment lawyer at Proskauer in New York. “Clients are struggling to figure it out.”Mr. Bloom and other lawyers and human resources experts said there was no clear pattern in how employers were handling the challenge.Many companies that already allow employees to carry vacation days into the next year — like Goldman Sachs (generally up to 10) and Spotify (generally up to 10) — have not felt the need to change their policies.The same is true for some companies that pay workers for their unused vacation days.Neither General Motors nor Ford Motor, whose hourly workers can cash out unused vacation days at the end of the year, is making changes this year.But many workers may find themselves unable to take vacations that they postponed: Salaried workers at both automakers ordinarily lose unused vacation days at the end of the year without compensation.Other companies have taken steps that could defuse a potential human resources headache and, they say, benefit their work forces in difficult times.Bank of America, which normally requires its U.S. employees to take all their vacation before the end of the year, said in June that it would allow them to push up to five days into the first quarter of 2021.Citigroup has typically allowed its U.S. employees to carry vacation days into the first quarter of the next year, but in July it added an inducement: Employees receive an extra vacation day next year if they use all of their 2020 vacation time this year.Smaller companies have made similar modifications.Latshaw Drilling, an oil service company based in Tulsa, Okla., typically allows office workers to roll over up to three weeks of vacation time. In December, Latshaw told its office employees that it would buy up to one week of unused time beyond that amount, which they would have otherwise lost.“Since this year was so crazy and people were afraid to travel, we made a one-time change,” said Trent Latshaw, the company’s founder and president.Several experts said a philosophical question loomed over vacation benefits: Is the point to ensure that workers take time off? Or are vacation days simply an alternative form of compensation that workers can use as they see fit, whether to relax away from the job, to supplement their income or to drag around with them until the end of time, as a monument to their productivity?An employer’s policies can reflect its views on this question: For all their drawbacks, use-it-or-lose-it rules can help ensure that workers take time off, said Jackie Reinberg, who heads the absence and disability practice of the consulting firm Willis Towers Watson. By contrast, rollover and cash-out options imply that vacation is an asset they are entitled to control.Credit…Jackson GibbsStill, for many workers, the issue during the pandemic is not unused vacation days so much as insufficient vacation days. Jonathan Williams, communications director for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, which represents grocery store workers in Mid-Atlantic States, said workers had sometimes been forced to draw down their reserves of paid time off if they were asked to quarantine a second time after a possible coronavirus exposure. Only the first quarantine is typically covered by the employer, Mr. Williams said.And some employees have difficulty taking advantage of the generous vacation policies their companies offer.The Coronavirus Outbreak More
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‘Tokenized’: Inside Black Workers’ Struggles at Coinbase
Coinbase, the most valuable U.S. cryptocurrency company, has faced many internal complaints about discriminatory treatment. More
