The New York State Department of Labor has issued proposed regulations interpreting and further defining the contours of the HERO Act's joint labor-management workplace safety committees. We summarize the proposed regulations below.
As we previously reported here, New York enacted the Health and Essential Rights Act - the "HERO Act" - on May 5, 2021 in an effort to address continued COVID-19 safety concerns in the workplace. But the law is much more than a COVID-19-related law and includes two core components.
First, the law requires employers to adopt and distribute health and safety plans that they must activate when the New York State Commissioner of Health designates any disease as a "highly contagious communicable disease that presents a serious risk of harm to the public health." At present, the Commission has made that designation as to COVID-19 and employers have been required to activate their health and safety plans through at least January 15, 2022 (the designation has been extended month-to-month since September 2021). The NYSDOL issued separate interpretative guidance via a FAQ and model HERO plan templates, which we discussed here.
The second part of HERO Act requires employers with 10 or more employees to permit employees at a worksite to establish a joint labor management workplace safety committee. This part of the law went into effect on November 1, 2021.
The HERO Act also required the NYSDOL to adopt rules and regulations to...
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