Article Menu
Beginning on January 1, 2023, the minimum wage for work performed on or in connection with federal contracts will increase as follows:
The Department of Labor has published helpful FAQs on Executive Order 13658 and Executive Order 14026. A side-by-side comparison of these executive orders, including the contracts covered by each, can be found here (though this document hasn’t been updated for 2023).
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has not yet announced whether its optional standard mileage rate will change as of January 1, 2023. We’ll update the platform if the rate changes.
The following wage and hour changes will take effect on January 1, 2023.
Minimum Wage
Massachusetts’s minimum wage will increase to $15 per hour. The minimum base wage for tipped employees will increase to $6.75 per hour.
Premium Pay Fully Phased Out
The mandatory premium pay rate for hours worked on Sundays and certain holidays, which only applied to retailers and was down to 1.1 times an employee’s regular rate of pay in 2022, will be eliminated. All employers, of course, will still need to pay nonexempt employees 1.5 times their regular rate for all overtime hours (i.e., hours over 40 hours in a workweek).
On January 1, 2023, the minimum wage in Minnesota will increase as follows:
The state minimum wage for employers with annual gross revenue of $500,000 or more will increase to $10.59 per hour. For employers with less than $500,000 in annual gross revenue, the minimum wage will be $8.63 per hour.
The minimum wage in Minneapolis for employers with 101 or more employees will increase to $15.19 per hour. (The minimum wage of $13.50 for employers with 100 or fewer employees remains in place until July 1, 2023.)
The minimum wage in St. Paul for employers with 10,001 or more employees will increase to $15.19 per hour. (The minimum wage rates for employers of other sizes remains in place until July 1, 2023.)
On January 1, 2023, New Jersey’s minimum wage for most employers will increase to $14.13 per hour. For seasonal and small employers (those with five or fewer employees), the minimum wage will increase to $12.93 per hour. Agricultural employers must pay at least $12.01 per hour. Employees who provide direct care at a long-term care facility will be entitled to $17.13 per hour.
The minimum base wage for tipped employees will increase to $5.26 per hour. Note that if you’re a small or seasonal employer, you can only take a tip credit if the base wage and tips bring the employee to $14.13 per hour.
The following changes to Virginia employment law apply as of January 1, 2023.
The state’s minimum wage will increase to $12 per hour. The minimum base wage for tipped employees remains at $2.13 per hour.
Hotel employers of any size must train employees how to recognize and report suspected human trafficking. Employees must be trained if they:
Employees must be trained within six months of starting work or June 30, 2023, whichever is later. Employees must be re-trained every two years. The Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services will provide or approve a free training course for employers to use. We recommend checking their website in the next few months.
Equal Employment, Leaves, Privacy Protections, and Minimum Wage
The following changes to California employment law take effect on January 1, 2023.
Reproductive health decisions will be added to the list of protected characteristics under California’s antidiscrimination law, which applies to employers that regularly employ five or more employees (regardless of location). Religious organizations and nonprofits are exempt.
Employers also can’t ask applicants or employees to provide any information about their reproductive health decisions as a condition of employment or to receive a benefit of employment. A reproductive health decision includes, but isn’t limited to, a decision to use or access a particular drug, device, product, or medical service for reproductive health.
Action Item
Add reproductive health decisions to your equal employment policies.
Employers that have five or more employees will be required to provide employees with up to five days of bereavement leave for the death of a family member. To determine your employee count, include all employees regardless of location. For purposes of bereavement leave, family member is defined as a spouse, child, parent, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, domestic partner, or parent-in-law. The law doesn’t allow employers to cap how many times an employee can take bereavement leave. That is, employees can take bereavement leave when any covered family member dies.
To be entitled to bereavement leave, an employee must have worked for the employer for at least 30 days before taking leave. The days of leave don’t have to be consecutive but must be taken within three months of the family member’s death.
If you don’t have a paid bereavement policy, the leave can be unpaid. If you have a bereavement policy that provides for less than five days of paid leave, the remaining days can be unpaid. Employees can choose to use their available vacation, paid sick leave, or other paid time off during any period of bereavement leave that would otherwise be unpaid. Salaried exempt employees must be paid in accordance with the Fair Labor Standards Act and California wage and hour law.
Employers can require the employee to provide documentation to verify their need for leave, such as a published obituary. Employers must keep information regarding an employee’s use of bereavement leave confidential.
Bereavement leave is a new leave entitlement and is separate from leave under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA).
Action Items
If you have five (or more) employees:
Employees will be able to take leave under the paid sick leave law and the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) to care for a designated person. For both laws, the employer can limit each employee to choosing one designated person per 12-month period. For CFRA, the designated person needs to have a serious health condition and can be anyone who the employee is either related to by blood or has a close association with that is equivalent to a family relationship. For paid sick leave, the employee can choose anyone as their designated person.
Paid sick leave applies to employers of all sizes. CFRA applies to employers that have five or more employees (regardless of location). Additional details are available on the platform.
Action Items
Employees will be entitled to leave work or not come in during emergency conditions if they have a reasonable belief that the workplace is unsafe. You can require employees to provide notice in advance when feasible or, if advance notice isn’t feasible, as soon as possible. This new law specifically entitles employees to use their cell phones or other devices to get emergency assistance, communicate with someone to make sure they’re safe, or assess the safety of a situation during an emergency condition.
An emergency condition means either:
A health pandemic does not qualify as an emergency condition. Several types of employees are exempt, such as first responders and employees of licensed residential care facilities.
Action Item
Review your attendance policy and, if it requires advance notice for absences, add an exception when advance notice isn’t feasible because of emergency conditions.
A new law that will allow drivers in California to sport digital license plates equipped with GPS has a limitation that could affect employers. Specifically, employers will be allowed to use a vehicle’s digital license plate to electronically track employees only during work hours and only if “strictly necessary” to perform their job duties. Employers that use tracking devices on employees’ vehicles must provide advance notice, which needs to include:
The California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA) takes effect January 1 and amends the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which has been in effect since 2018. (You’ll see both CCPA and CPRA used to describe this law.) The amendments from the CPRA create new obligations for covered employers.
The CCPA/CPRA applies if your business meets any of the following conditions:
This law is primarily a business regulation, and given its breadth and complexity, we recommend working with an attorney for comprehensive guidance about your CCPA/CPRA obligations. We think three requirements are worth highlighting for covered employers to prepare for in their role as employers.
First, employers must provide an expanded notice about their privacy practices before or when collecting personal information, such as information on a job application. In addition to the current requirement to notify employees and applicants of the categories of personal information that will be collected and the purposes for which that information will be used, the notice must include:
Second, employers must provide employees with notice about their rights under this law, such as to delete or correct personal information.
Third, employers generally have 45 days to grant an employee’s or applicant’s request to access their personal information, correct inaccurate personal information, and delete personal information (with certain exceptions).
Statewide Minimum Wage
California’s minimum wage for all employers regardless of size will increase to $15.50 per hour. This is a change from the increase that was previously scheduled because of a provision in the law that is triggered when inflation is above 7%.
Exempt Employee Minimum Salaries and Wages
The minimum salary threshold for exempt employees will increase to $1,240 per week ($64,480 per year) for employers regardless of their employee count.
The minimum hourly rate for exempt computer software employees will increase to $53.80 per hour (or an annual salary of $112,065.20).
The minimum rate for exempt licensed physicians and surgeons paid on an hourly basis will increase to $97.99 per hour.
Local Minimum Wages
The hourly minimum wage will also increase in the following cities:
EXTRA! EXTRA! LINK ALL ABOUT IT!
Information about these new California employment laws is available on the platform:
Minimum Wage, Meal Breaks, Day of Rest, Equal Employment, Bereavement Leave, and Equal Pay Reporting
The following changes to Illinois employment law apply as of January 1, 2023.
The minimum wage will increase to $13 per hour, and the minimum base wage for tipped employees will increase to $7.80 per hour. Illinois’s minimum wage law applies to employers with four or more employees (regardless of location).
Illinois has expanded its requirements for days of rest and meal breaks, which apply to employers of all sizes, as follows:
More Frequent Days of Rest
Employers will have to provide nonexempt employees with at least 24 consecutive hours off of work in each consecutive seven-day period instead of each calendar week. This means employers can’t schedule an employee for more than six days in a row. There are several exemptions, including for supervisors and employees who work 20 hours or less per week. The law still allows employers to obtain a waiver if an employee wants to work on their day of rest. The application is available from the Illinois Department of Labor (IDOL).
Additional Meal Break for Long Shifts
Employees who work more than 7.5 hours in a row will be entitled to an additional 20-minute meal break for every 4.5 hours worked. For example, an employee who works a 12-hour shift will get two 20-minute meals breaks.
Notice
Employers must post a notice about these rights in a conspicuous location at work. For employees who don’t regularly report to the workplace, employers must provide the notice by email or on an internal website that the employer regularly uses to communicate work-related information and that all employees can regularly access. IDOL will create a notice (or update its existing notice), but hasn’t yet. We recommend checking its website closer to the end of the year.
Action Items
Employers will be prohibited from discriminating on the basis of traits associated with race, including hairstyle. The state’s employment discrimination law, which applies to employers of all sizes, will define race to include traits associated with race, including, but not limited to, hair texture and protective hairstyles. Examples of protective hairstyles include braids, locks, and twists.
Employers should evaluate any policies that limit hairstyles, including policies that contain indirect restrictions, such as those that require hair to be less than a certain length. We also recommend training those involved in the hiring process to not make judgments about professionalism or cultural fit based on hairstyle. If you have safety concerns, brainstorm ways to safely allow protected hairstyles. For example, employees with long hair may be able to tie it back or cover it during hazardous activities. If you (or the employee) can’t resolve a conflict between protected hairstyles and safety, we recommend consulting with an attorney before taking adverse action against the employee.
Many states that adopt a CROWN act (which stands for Create a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair), including Illinois, define race to include any trait associated with race—not just hairstyles. This could generate broader applications of the law, such as protections for dialect and styles of dress.
Action Items
Bereavement leave in Illinois will be expanded to include more than the death of a child. Employers that have 50 or more employees will now be required to provide employees with time off for the death of an expanded list of family members, including grandparents and grandchildren, and for an expanded list of reasons related to pregnancy, fertility, and adoption, including miscarriage. Employers can cap bereavement leave at 10 workdays per death or event, and six weeks for the deaths of multiple family members in a 12-month period. The leave can generally be unpaid. Employees are entitled to use their other available paid time off, such as vacation time, during their leave. See the law alert on the platform for additional details.
Documentation
Employers may require reasonable documentation to support the need for leave (for example, a copy of an obituary) but can’t require that an employee disclose which category of bereavement leave they need. For leave for losses related to pregnancy, adoption, or fertility, reasonable documentation includes a completed model form that IDOL will make available or a note from a surrogacy or adoption agency.
Action Item
Update your bereavement leave policy to include the additional covered family members and expanded reasons for leave and ensure that managers and employees are made aware of the change.
Employers that are required to file a federal EEO-1 report and have 100 or more employees based in Illinois are required to send the information from Section D of the EEO-1 report to the Illinois Secretary of State, beginning in 2023. We recommend contacting IDOL for additional guidance related to this law.
Paid Family Leave, COVID Vaccination Leave, and Minimum Wages and Salaries
The following changes to New York employment law cover employers of all sizes.
Beginning on January 1, 2023, eligible employees will be entitled to use Paid Family Leave (PFL) to care for a sibling (whether biological, adopted, step, or half) with a serious health condition in addition to the family members who are currently covered. Additional details are available on the platform.
Action Item
If your PFL policy defines family member, update it to include siblings.
Employees will still be entitled to take COVID vaccination leave in 2023. This leave entitlement was originally set to expire on December 31, 2022, but was extended for an additional year. Employees can take up to four hours of paid leave per COVID vaccine injection, including boosters. This leave is in addition to all other leave the employee is entitled to. Details are available on the platform.
Action Item
If your COVID vaccination leave policy has an expiration date, update it.
Changes to minimum wage and salary thresholds apply as of December 31, 2022. Note that home care aides must be paid $2 per hour more than the applicable minimum wage. The rates in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County remain unchanged.
Upstate New York
The minimum wage in upstate New York (all areas outside of New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County) will increase to $14.20 per hour. The minimum base wage for tipped hospitality workers will be $11.85 per hour for service employees and $9.45 per hour for food service workers.
The minimum salary threshold for exempt executive and administrative employees will increase to $1,064.25 per week ($55,341 annually).
Proliant puts the human in human resources. We provide a fully integrated, cloud-based HCM solution that simplifies payroll and HR processes. The company serves small to large clients in multiple industries in all 50 states and is committed to providing the highest quality customer service in the industry.
Headquarters
1100 Abernathy Road, Suite 1000
Atlanta, GA 30328
877.896.9523
No Comments Yet
Let us know what you think