Íæż½ã½ã

Solicitations requiring bidders on certain U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) construction projects to submit an executed project labor agreement (PLA) prompted Íæż½ã½ã to write and call agency officials expressing strong concern.  On August 18, the agency called Íæż½ã½ã to announce that it was withdrawing the PLA requirement and to thank Íæż½ã½ã for educating them on the issue.

On June 25, President Obama signed into law H.R. 3962, the Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and Pension Relief Act of 2010 (the Act), a stand-alone measure to prevent a scheduled cut in Medicare reimbursements to physicians and to provide short-term funding relief to both single- and multi-employer pension plans.  The Act contains several provisions to help multiemployer pension funds hit hard by 2008-2009 investment losses.  However, it does not contain the preferred measures sought by Íæż½ã½ã and its coalition partners and passed by the House earlier this year. 

Collective bargaining settlements reported to the Construction Labor Research Council (CLRC) between January and June of this year resulted in an average first-year wage-and-benefits increase of $0.55 or 1.1 percent.  This is considerably lower than the $1.49 or 3.1 percent average increase reported for the comparable period last year.  The average second-year increase in newly negotiated multi-year agreements is $0.69 or 1.6 percent, and the average third-year increase is $1.01 or 2.2 percent.  These increases are also lower than those negotiated a year earlier, but by a smaller margin, according to CLRC.  As reported earlier in Human Resource & Labor News, wage-and-benefit increases negotiated in 2009 overall were the lowest in 13 years.

Íæż½ã½ã held a regional meeting with the National Construction Alliance II (NCA II) - a partnership of the Carpenters and Operating Engineers unions - on August 4 in Boston, Mass..  Meeting participants discussed such issues as the multiemployer pension plan crisis, restrictive work rules and subcontracting clauses, increasing productivity, jurisdictional disputes, national heavy-highway agreements, and the NCA II unions' relationship with the AFL-CIO's Building and Construction Trades Department.

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Division has released an updated version of the Child Labor Rules Advisor, an interactive, online compliance assistance tool.  The revised Advisor incorporates regulatory changes that became effective on July 19, 2010. 

At Íæż½ã½ã's 2010 HR Professionals Conference and Training & Development Conference, participants will learn the importance of coaching to transform employee potential into workplace performance, and ultimately, corporate results.  Kelly S. Riggs of Vmax Performance Group in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, will address both groups in a joint, keynote session on October 19, in Scottsdale, Ariz. 

The Department of Homeland Security has issued a final rule to revise the regulations regarding completion and retention of I-9 forms. The revision gives employers the discretion to sign and retain I-9 forms electronically. 

Recently, the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) Wage and Hour Division posted a new fact sheet that provides guidance to employers on the break time requirement for nursing mothers to express milk in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  The Act became effective on March 23, 2010, and amended Section 7 of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA.) 

Íæż½ã½ã's San Diego Chapter teamed up with other local groups to help pass initiatives that banned project labor agreements (PLAs) in Chula Vista and Oceanside, Calif.

On June 17, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion in New Process Steel v. NLRB holding that the National Labor Relations Board lacked authority to issue decisions from the end of 2007 to March 2010, when the five-member Board had only two members.  The decision effectively invalidates nearly 600 Board decisions issued during the 27-month period.