The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Economic Policy released a new report entitled, “Labor Unions and the Middle Class,” that highlights the role that labor unions play in the American economy.
The U.S. Department of Labor issued a press release and accompanying blog post to announce the launch of the Apprentice Trailblazer Initiative, which is intended to create a national network of apprentices and apprenticeship graduates whose stories may inspire others interested in becoming apprentices.
Employers — especially construction employers — will be interested in new data the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics published May 18 on the role of foreign-born persons in the U.S. workforce (people currently working in the United States who were born outside the U.S. and neither parent was a U.S. citizen).
The General Services Administration announced a six-month pilot of new requirements for the procurement of substantially lower embodied-carbon construction materials for 11 GSA projects funded by the Inflation Reduction Act.
The U.S. Department of Labor released its 812-page pre-publication version of the final rule to modernize Davis-Bacon prevailing wage that SWACCA has been engaged on dating back to the Biden presidential transition. The final rule represents the most sweeping overhaul of Davis-Bacon regulations since the Reagan Administration.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to implement the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act. Enacted in December 2022, the PWFA requires covered entities to provide reasonable accommodations to a worker’s known limitation related to pregnancy, childbirth or related medical conditions, unless the accommodation will cause the employer undue hardship.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration published a proposed rule to revise its personal protective equipment standard for construction to explicitly require that PPE must fit properly to protect workers from workplace hazards.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced it will hold Safe + Sound Week on Aug. 7-13. Safe + Sound Week is a nationwide event for workplaces to recognize and improve their safety and health programs.
The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and officials from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Federal Trade Commission jointly committed to an all-hands-on-deck effort “to investigate, challenge and combat discrimination based on automated systems” now that “social media platforms, banks, landlords, employers and other businesses…rely on artificial intelligence, algorithms and other data tools to automate decision-making and to conduct business” that “too often result…in discriminatory outcomes.”
