The Department of Insurance has approved emergency workers’ compensation rules dealing with COVID-19 and California employers. The rules were recommended by the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau to bring fairness for employers’ experience rating during the COVID-19 pandemic amid shelter-at-home orders and for dealing with claims of workers who contract COVID-19 on the job. The…
Employment practices and employee benefit-related lawsuits are on the rise — and employers have to be eternally vigilant when it comes to meeting their compliance obligations as plan sponsors. Take the case of Visteon, a global automotive industry supplier, which outsourced its payroll and enrollment/disenrollment functions to outside plan administrators. But because of internal mistakes…
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, California’s workers’ compensation rating agency plans to implement a new class code for telecommuting employees on Jan. 1, 2021. The Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau of California started work on the new classification after swaths of companies ordered employees that could work remotely to start working at home after the…
Virginia is on the cusp of creating the nation’s first pandemic workplace safety requirements for employers, a standard that many in the occupational safety and health community expect could be a model for other state-operated Occupational Safety and Health Administrations to follow. With no signs that Fed-OSHA is looking to develop similar regulations, some state…
As more of America’s workers were asked to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, cyber criminals jumped at the opportunity to take advantage, it seems. Remote work means work being handled on the cloud as employees share files and need a convenient way to access them. But cyber criminals are banking on workers…
As the COVID-19 pandemic wears on and more employees go back to work, the risk of catching the disease for workers has spawned a growing wave of employment litigation. Lawsuits are flying as employers struggle to keep their workplaces safe and negotiate an often-confusing mishmash of new and existing laws and regulations. Regulators have been…
With temperatures rising, employers with outdoor workers need to take steps to protect them from heat illness. California employers need to be especially mindful as Cal/OSHA has workplace safety regulations governing the prevention of heat illness. The heat illness standard came into effect about seven years ago as the number of deaths due to heat…
COVID-19-related losses for property-casualty insurers are likely to top $100 billion, with workers’ compensation accounting for about a third of all payouts, according to a new report by Wells Fargo & Co. The report estimates that workers’ compensation could see total COVID-19 claims payouts of up to $34 billion, but that factors like the severity…
COVID-19 and workplace safety has been a moving target for OSHA and it has released a number of advisories, including one in March that said new cases were recordable events and then another one in mid-April saying employers are not required to report new cases among employees. But in May OSHA issued new guidance, once…
As protests around the country descended into rioting and civil unrest, many businesses that have been looted, or seen their shops damaged or completely destroyed, will obviously be turning to their insurance to file a claim. While many companies were unsuccessful in filing business interruption claims for the COVID-19 crisis, claims for damage and theft…