Coronavirus Update 2-9-2021: Time off for the COVID-19 vaccine

At some point over the next few months, some (most?) of your employees will receive the COVID-19 vaccine. Depending on the rules of your state, the nature of your business, and the age or medical issues of your employees, some may already have. I've previous covered the legal issues surrounding the vaccine, here, here, and here. Today I want to cover a practical issue—time-off related to the vaccination.

Have you felt the pain of a wage/hour investigation or lawsuit?

For the past three years, the Department of Labor has been trying to get employees PAID for their unpaid overtime and minimum wages. That's PAID, as in the Payroll Audit Independent Determination program, a creation of the Trump administration that allowed employers to self-report FLSA violations to the Department of Labor without risk of litigation, enforcement proceedings, or liquidated damages.

As of last week, however, the PAID program is history, as the DOL announced its immediate end.

Podcast recommendation: The Test Kitchen

I'm always on the lookout for new podcasts to add to my queue. Today's is a doozy. It's called The Test Kitchen, and it comes from the editors of Reply All at Gimlet Media. In four parts, it will tell a sadly familiar tale of racism and toxicity in the workplace. The workplace at issue is Bon Appétit magazine. 

Here's the set-up.

You'll find the full episode here, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

No, you don’t get to keep your paid leave after your position is eliminated

The headline reads, "Trump aides made a late request to Team Biden to extend their parental leave. They said no." Here's the story:

[A] number of ex-Trump political officials … lost their parental leave when Joe Biden was sworn into office. It's a byproduct of the field they're in: Their boss (the president) may have been the one let go, but his departure has meant that they, too, lose their jobs and benefits. Still, they argue that the Biden administration should have honored their leave by keeping them on payroll until the end of it — a request that … the Biden transition did not grant.

One such employee, Vanessa Ambrosini, welcomed a new baby the week before Christmas, and was looking forward to parental leave through mid to late March. "I got completely screwed," she says.

No, Vanessa, you didn't. What you got was unemployed, a fact of which you should have been well aware since at least November 7. In fact, you should have been aware of it for more than a month before you started your maternity leave. It seems to me these employees are trying to take advantage of the consequences of which they were well aware in an attempt to make the new administration look bad. I don't buy it.

Coronavirus Update 2-3-2021: Have you had to deal with “COVID fraud” in your workplace?

According to Vice, people are using photo editing software to doctor COVID test results.

"I just fired up photoshop and changed the date," wrote one man who had doctored results for an entire group of friends to Motherboard. "Fun fact, the document [test result] was in French whereas they were in Sweden the day it was supposedly made, but they didn't see a problem in that."

The other person took a slightly less sophisticated route and changed the date of an old test with Microsoft Paint for his vacation to Southern Europe.

Coronavirus Update 2-2-2021: As new COVID-19 variants doubling down on transmissibility, OSHA doubles down on prevenative measures

"Wear a mask and stay 6 feel apart." It might sound like Groundhog Day to keep repeating this mantra. It's also the most basic and most important steps we can take to remain safe, healthy, and COVID-free.

Last week OSHA published new guidance for employers about mitigating and preventing the spread of COVID-19 in the workplace. While I recommend you read it, understand it, and adopt its teachings in your workplace as best practices to keep your employees safe and healthy, I want to draw your attention to this language.

Not distinguishing between workers who are vaccinated and those who are not: Workers who are vaccinated must continue to follow protective measures, such as wearing a face covering and remaining physically distant, because at this time, there is not evidence that COVID-19 vaccines prevent transmission of the virus from person-to-person. The CDC explains that experts need to understand more about the protection that COVID-19 vaccines provide before deciding to change recommendations on steps everyone should take to slow the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19.

How many N-words create a hostile work environment?

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to answer these questions:

Whether an employee's exposure to the N-word in the workplace is severe enough to send his Title VII hostile-work-environment claim to a trier of fact.

Whether and in what circumstances racial epithets in the workplace are "extremely serious" incidents sufficient to create a hostile work environment under Title VII, rather than nonactionable "mere utterances."