The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration announced plans to hold an online meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health on Jan. 23, 2023, from 2 to 4 p.m. EST.
SWACCA’s public policy team is pleased that another multi-year advocacy campaign has ended in success. Since the summer of 2020, SWACCA has been at the forefront of an effort with its allies in the Construction Employers of America and its union partners to reverse regulations that negatively altered the analysis trustees of ERISA plans must use when assessing plan investments.
As California works to finalize a permanent COVID-19 worker protection rule, the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health declined to include a provision in the rule requiring employers to pay workers who take virus-related time off.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation released its List of Plans in Special Financial Assistance Application Priority Group 6, which consists of plans for which PBGC projects a present value of financial assistance payments under section 4261 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act that would exceed $1 billion in the absence of SFA. The application period for Priority Group 6 plans is scheduled to open on Feb. 11, 2023.
In Nov. 15’s Federal Register, the U.S. Department of Transportation is proposing, through two separate notices, waivers to the “Buy America Domestic Content Procurement Preference” for construction materials as applied to recipients of federal financial assistance. These waivers would apply to all DOT-assisted programs for infrastructure (i.e., not just those funded under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) across all DOT component agencies.
On Nov. 3, the Signatory Wall and Ceiling Contractors Alliance submitted comments in support of the Department of Labor’s proposed independent contractor rule that would rescind the prior Administration’s rule that made it easier to classify employees in the construction industry and across the economy as independent contractors. The proposed rule replaces this regulation with a well-understood standard ground in 60 years of judicial precedents that SWACCA urged the Labor Department to adopt because it is easier to apply and will make it harder for employers to claim their workers are independent contractors.
The National Labor Relations Board released a proposed rule to rescind and replace the Trump-era Board’s April 1, 2020, final rule revising election procedures under the NLRA. Specifically, Nov. 3’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking has three parts, each rescinding a corresponding portion of the NLRB’s April 2020 final rule.
This week, SWACCA concluded weeks of work to ensure the submission of three distinct comment letters in support of the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council’s proposed rule entitled, “Use of Project Labor Agreements for Federal Construction Projects” to implement President Biden’s February Executive Order creating a presumption that PLAs are to be used by federal agencies for large-scale construction projects for which the cost is estimated to be $35 million or more, subject to specified exemptions.
The Department of Labor published a final rule on Sept. 26 to rescind Trump-era Industry Recognized Apprenticeship Programs that marks the end of a four-year fight by SWACCA’s public policy team in Washington, D.C. This final rule will be effective on Nov. 25.
On Sept. 2, the General Services Administration published a direct final rule amending the Federal Management Regulation to revise the ban on soliciting employees of contractors in GSA-controlled buildings so that union organizers can access these workers. The rule is effective immediately while open to a 60-day comment period that ends Nov. 1.
