Tag Archives: Employment Posters

Employers Required to Display Poster Changes

Effective August 1, 2016, all employers of every size workforce must comply with two new mandatory federal poster changes.  The US Department of Labor (DOL) has updated its Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) poster and the Employee Polygraph Protection Act (EPPA) poster.

The changes to the FLSA poster include removing civil penalty amounts, the addition of the riflsaghts of nursing mothers, and a deletion of text under the Child Labor section. Except for a few very narrowly exempted employers, whether you have two employees or two hundred employees, you need to put up this new poster.

The changes to the EPPA poster include a removal of a civil penalty limit, a change in their toll-free phone number, and an additional TTY phone number. All employers, regardless of the number of employees and regardless of whether you would ever consider giving your employees a polygraph, must display this poster in the workplace.

The mandatory notices must be posted immediately. As with all of your employment posters, these two new ones should be displayed in a prominent and conspicuous place in each of your establishments wherever notices can be readily seen by employees and applicants. A spot right next to your time clock or in your employee entrance area is ideal. Just make sure wherever you place your posters is a place that all of your employees regularly enter.

If you need help knowing which posters besides these two you need to have displayed in your workforce, you can find the lists of required federal posters here and Texas posters here. All of the required posters are available online for free. You don’t need to pay a commercial service for a combined poster that isn’t customized to the specifics of your workplace.

Don’t ignore your federal and state posting requirements. The penalties have risen recently. For example, if you have 15 or more employees, the failure to put up the required EEO poster was raised to $210 in 2014 for each of your locations and is now indexed to the Consumer Price Index to increase with inflation. Considering you have as many as twelve posters required in your workplace, you don’t want to be fined for something so easily remedied.

Texas Businesses Wrestle with Presence of Handguns

Texas businesses have to wrestle with the laws regarding the carrying of handguns by employees and customers in their workplaces.  I’m amazed at how many businesses I counsel who haven’t even thought about the issue in a state where there are millions of guns. I’ve written about this before (here and here), but there is still confusion about a private business’s rights and responsibilities regarding guns in Texas.

As of January 1, 2016, Texas allowed the more than 825,000 residents of the state who are licensed to carry a handgun to openly display the gun in a shoulder or hip holster. Texans may also choose to conceal the handgun and carry it with them on their bodies or in bags or purses. Texas also has reciprocity agreements to allow visitors licensed in many other states to carry guns here.

The state has only banned handguns completely in the following workplaces:

  • bars or restaurants earning more than 51% of their revenue from alcohol sales (they’ll have a sign up stating that fact),
  • correctional facilities,
  • high school, collegiate and professional sporting events,
  • school grounds and school buses,
  • polling places,
  • courtrooms and court offices,
  • racetracks, and
  • secure areas of airports.

It is also illegal under federal law to carry handguns in federal governmental buildings, such as post offices, federal courthouses, the IRS office, Social Security office, etc.

Hospitals, nursing homes, amusement parks, churches and private businesses like yours can prohibit the carrying of pistols onto the premises by employees and/or visitors, but you have do this proactively. Texas law does not make it illegal to carry a handgun into these premises unless the handgun owner has been notified that he/she cannot carry at that place.

Even without hanging the required signs, employers can put a written policy in their employee manual prohibiting employees from bringing handguns into the workplace. Should you do this? Separating out the politics of that question, it depends on

  • your beliefs about guns in general,
  • how comfortable your employees are being around gun-toting coworkers,
  • whether you believe your business is located in a safe area of town,
  • whether your employees face real dangers in their job that a handgun could minimize,
  • whether you have other ways to keep your employees secure (such as evacuation drills, good lighting, security guards, secured entrances, alarms, etc.)
  • whether your employees are well-trained in the safety and use of a handgun (the required 4-hour Texas licensing course is not adequate for this purpose),
  • whether you want to face disciplining and/or firing a volatile employee wearing a sidearm,
  • whether you are covered by special insurance for handgun liability if there is an accidental discharge of a weapon (your general liability policy probably won’t cover it),
  • whether you are prepared for the lawsuits that may follow a shooting (there is no immunity in the open carry statute for an employer when an employee hurts someone with his weapon), and
  • how your customers will react to seeing your employees armed.

If you can’t decide, have a conversation with your employees to determine the best option for your business and do some objective research for yourself about whether the scenario of a “good guy with a gun” protecting people in your workplace is a real possibility or a myth.

Once you have decided whether to allow your employees to carry handguns and have adopted a written policy explaining the employee rule, the next question is whether to prohibit customers, vendors and other visitors to your workplace from carrying any kind of handgun on your private property. Continue reading Texas Businesses Wrestle with Presence of Handguns

Workplace Posters For Free Online

There are companies that want to sell you expensive workplace posters that you don’t need to purchase because they are available for free online. Many employers are afraid that they don’t know which employment notices must be visible in the workplace, so they fall for the marketing pitch to pay for these expensive commercial posters.

As a Texas employer, have you received advertising in the mail similar to the notice pictured here? Such notices appear official, and can feel almost threatening, with warnings of penalties and fines associated with an employer failing to post current state and federal employment posters in the workplace.

Employment Poster Solicitation

It is not necessary for a Texas employer to pay $84 for the poster offered here. While it is true that posting certain notices and information is legally required, employers need not pay any company for this information. Free copies of the required posters can be found from the websites of each of the federal or Texas agencies that require them. The Texas Workforce Commission has graciously gathered a list of these posters into one place for you here.

Not only are you out the money if you buy one of these expensive posters, but these for-profit posters could actually hurt you if they promise rights to your employees that the law does not give them (such as promising Family and Medical Leave rights if the company has less than 50 employees and isn’t required to provide Family and Medical Leave). You don’t want to obligate yourself to things the law doesn’t require you to provide. The poster “invoice” pictured here didn’t ask the size of the employer’s workforce and apparently was not tailored to the laws to which a particular employer was subject.

As of August 2015, the posters that you as a Texas employer must have on your bulletin board, depending on the size of your workforce, are as follows: Continue reading Workplace Posters For Free Online