On May 5, 2021, Governor Cuomo signed New York Health and Essential Rights Bill into law which mandates extensive new workplace health and safety protections in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
Applicability:<\/strong> The Act defines \u201cemployees\u201d broadly to include those individuals \u201cproviding labor or services for remuneration\u201d as well as, among others, part-time workers, independent contractors, domestic workers, home health and personal care workers, and seasonal workers. State and other governmental agency employees are excluded from the Act\u2019s protections and state and governmental agency employers are exempt from the Act. Otherwise, the Act covers all employers in the state, regardless of size.<\/p>\n Key Features:<\/strong><\/p>\n 2. The Act requires private employers to allow employees to establish a joint employer-employee workplace health and safety committee authorized to raise health and safety issues and evaluate workplace health and safety policies.<\/p>\n 3. The Act also prohibits discrimination and retaliation against employees for exercising their rights under the Act or the employer\u2019s plan or reporting violations of the Act or the employer\u2019s plan to officials.<\/p>\n 4. The Commission may assess civil penalties in the amount of $50 per day for an employer\u2019s failure to adopt a plan and no less than $1,000 and not more than $10,000 for failing to follow a plan. The Act also permits employees in some instances to seek injunctive relief and for the courts to award costs, including attorneys\u2019 fees and liquidated damages up to $20,000.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On May 5, 2021, Governor Cuomo signed New York Health and Essential Rights Bill into law which mandates extensive new workplace health <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8808,"featured_media":248017,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-248016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-foreign","category-legislationupdates"],"yoast_head":"\n\n
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