Subject: GEA Newsletter #10 June 01, 2022

Newsletter #10 June 01, 2022

EMPLOYMENT LAW NEWS

HRDive.com BRIEF

FMLA allows leave for mental health treatment, DOL reminds employers

Published May 27, 2022

Emilie Shumway Editor

Dive Brief:

The Family and Medical Leave Act protects time off for mental health treatment, the U.S. Department of Labor reminded employers May 25. The agency released two guidance documents — Fact Sheet #280: Mental Health Conditions and the FMLA and Frequently Asked Questions on the FMLA’s mental health provisions — to help employers and workers understand how the law applies to mental health treatment.
FMLA-eligible employees can use the leave to address serious mental health conditions that require inpatient care or continuing treatment for themselves or their family, DOL noted in the fact sheet. The accompanying FAQ document explores a number of scenarios in which workers might seek to use the leave, including in cases of severe anxiety, regular treatment for anorexia and use of the leave to care for or attend counseling sessions with a family member with a mental health condition.
“While many people coping with mental illness may face barriers to treatment including social stigmas, a lack of available services or financial resources, the U.S. Department of Labor is determined to ensure that obtaining job-protected leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act is not another obstacle to overcome when workers seek the mental health support they need,” the agency stated in the release....Continue Reading >>

Constangy.com News & Analysis

USCIS expands premium processing, but only for certain previously filed petitions

By Will Krasnow / Boston Office

05.27.22

This week, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it would soon expand the availability of premium processing for certain petitions that have already been filed.

Under the new policy, petitioners can request premium processing of their pending Form I-140, Immigrant Petition for Alien Workers, “under an E13 multinational executive and manager classification or E21 classification as a member of professions with advanced degrees or exceptional ability seeking a national interest waiver . . ..”

To request premium processing, the eligible petitioner must file a Form I-907, Request for Premium Processing Service. Requests for premium processing of E13 multinational executive and manager petitions will be accepted starting this Tuesday, June 1, but the petitions must have been received by the USCIS on or before January 1, 2021. Starting July 1, the USCIS will accept premium processing requests for these petitions if the petitions had been received by the USCIS on or before March 1, 2021.

Also starting July 1, the USCIS will accept premium processing requests for E21 national interest waiver petitions that were received by the USCIS on or before June 1, 2021.

The rapid approval of these additional I-140 petitions will also allow the petitioners’ eligible beneficiaries to apply for adjustment of status to a permanent resident in the United States or for an immigrant visa abroad.

If the request for premium processing is accepted by the USCIS, the petition will be processed in 45 days. The premium processing fee is $2,500.

Background

Historically, requests for premium processing have been available for employer petitioners for certain I-129 (E, H, L, O, P, Q and TN) and I-140 Immigrant Petitions for Alien Workers categories. Petitioners paid an additional fee to have the processing completed within 15 days.

To reduce long delays in processing certain employer petitions and individual applications, the USCIS announced several changes to premium processing earlier this spring. The changes included adding Form I-539, Application to Extend/Change Nonimmigrant Status, and Form I-765, Application for Employment Authorization. The USCIS also announced at that time that more I-140 petition categories would become eligible for premium processing. The changes were to be phased in starting in the current fiscal year (FY22), and the first priority was to be the changes to Form I-140 processing. That was the subject of this week’s USCIS announcement.

The premium processing time for the I-129 categories will remain at 15 days. The fees for premium processing for most of these categories has increased to $2,500.

The fee for premium processing of the I-539 will be $1,750, and the fee for premium processing of the I-765 will be $1,500.

New I-907 form

Also this week, the USCIS published a new version of Form I-907. Petitioners can use either the old form (the 9/30/20 form) or the new form (the 5/31/22 form) through June 30. As of July 1, the USCIS will no longer accept the old form.

For a printer-friendly copy, click here.

Constangy.com BLOG

Court gets the joke: Twitter "threat" didn't violate NLRA

BY ROBIN SHEA ON 5.24.22
POSTED IN LABOR RELATIONS, SOCIAL MEDIA

I still think an emoji would have helped.

A couple of years ago, I posted about a decision from an administrative law judge who found that Ben Domenech, co-founder and Executive Officer of FDRLST Media, LLC, and publisher of the libertarian webzine The Federalist, had committed an unfair labor practice under the National Labor Relations Act.

In 2019, during a labor dispute at an unrelated media company, Mr. Domenech had posted the following on Twitter:

Then some lawyer dude in Massachusetts, who had nothing to do with Mr. Domenech, his employees, or his company, filed an unfair labor practice charge, saying that Mr. Domenech's tweet violated Section 8(a)(1) of the National Labor Relations Act. The New York Regional Director of the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint, and in 2020, an ALJ found that the tweet violated the NLRA by interfering with employees' right to organize. Then the National Labor Relations Board affirmed the ALJ decision, with a few modifications. (Interestingly, two of the three Board members who ruled against FDRLST were Trump appointees.) The company then asked a court to review the NLRB decision, and the NLRB asked the court to enforce its decision.....Continue Reading >>

HRDive.com Q&A

How to identify and accommodate employees’ varied learning styles

Published May 31, 2022

By Carla Bell Senior Editor

Individuals take in and process information in a variety of ways, according to Terrence Maltbia, associate professor of organization and leadership at Columbia University. When it comes to employee development, it would serve employers to understand those differences and personalize learning accordingly, he told HR Dive.

“Wouldn’t it be great if I’m a manager to know the learning styles of my people to know where they’re energized, and use that as a basis for distributed work, and responsibility, and assignments and so on, so that I know how to best communicate with them and how to best motivate them?” he asked.

Maltbia, who specializes in adult learning, said recognizing learning styles and scripts — and acknowledging their strengths — is working smarter, not harder. He emphasized the importance of organizational support and broader application of a learning styles framework in the following interview, edited for clarity....

..Continue Reading >>

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