Question: Several of our employees have talked about having Thanksgiving with large groups of extended family. What can we do to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spreading into our workplace?

Answer: Assuming you don't want to make everyone quarantine or argue with employees about their Thanksgiving dinner plans, I’d follow the guidelines used for exposed healthcare workers. Everyone in the workplace should:

A: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has issued guidance that employers may take employees’ temperatures during the COVID-19 pandemic because COVID-19 is spreading nationwide. Note that many people may have COVID-19 without a fever, so other safety precautions should not be scaled back just because employees “checked out” upon arrival to work. The CDC summarizes symptoms here. Employees’ body temperatures are considered medical information and must be kept confidential under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).  

***Update: On September 14, DHS announced another 30-day extension of this temporary rule. The rule is now set to expire on November 19, 2020. 

The physical presence requirement of the Employment Eligibility Verification, Form I-9, requires that employers, or an authorized representative, physically examine, in the employee’s physical presence, the unexpired document(s) the employee presents from the Lists of Acceptable Documents to complete the Documents fields in Form I-9’s Section 2.

In response to a court ruling in early August that invalidated certain regulations by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) related to leave under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, the DOL has released revised regulations. The changes, or lack of changes, are outlined below. The revisions take effect when they are published in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for September 16.

No one knows what the workplace is going to look like in three months. COVID-19 continues to spread. School reopening and attendance plans remain tenuous. Further action from Congress is uncertain. Official rules from the Department of Labor might even be struck down in court, further adding to the confusion about what employers are supposed to be doing.

A federal court in New York recently struck down four federal Department of Labor rules related to the leaves provided by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA). As a result, certain aspects of the FFCRA are now more favorable to employees. Unfortunately, it’s not clear if the ruling applies nationwide or only in the Southern District of New York, where the court is located. Until there is further activity in the case—which may clarify whether the rules remain intact throughout the rest of the country—we recommend that employers err on the side of caution when administering FFCRA leaves and assume these particular rules no longer apply.

ANSWERED BY THE PROS:

The spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) has employers rightly concerned about how to handle threats of contagion in the workplace. Along with those worries come concerns about violating other laws in the process of trying to keep the workplace safe. Specifically, the ADA comes to mind; if we send someone home who appears sick, have we then discriminated against someone with a disability? Thankfully, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has answered a number of common questions that employers are asking. Additional EEOC guidance can be found here.