Sign Virginia Travel Agency Agreement Easy

Document type sign travel agency agreement virginia easy

all right good afternoon everyone um if you have not yet and it appears though everyone has please mute your uh your phone or your computer so we don't get any background noise um thank you for joining us today my name is merrick green i'm the founder managing partner of general counsel pc which is a law firm in declan virginia i'm also the owner of business compliance llc which has been working on these covet emergency standard um forms uh with me here today is david pirano who is a law student who's an intern with us and has really been helping out and probably spending several hundred hours in the past few weeks going through all the regulations and helping us get all the forms up and running and understanding uh the temporary emergency standard and helping our clients so thank you very much um as we go forward if everyone can keep their phone muted if you have particular questions as we go on please use the chat function and then also be sure to allow time for questions um at the end of the presentation so first just a quick um overview um as i said my name is merrick green um general counsel pc is a law firm that i started about 15 years ago we're in mclean virginia and we as the name applies we're general counsel to businesses and nonprofits uh throughout virginia and a number of businesses throughout the united states uh primarily helping clients with day in day out legal issues from employment law corporate business issues government contracts and litigation so obviously please follow up with us at any time with any questions that you might have or we can help with any sort of legal issues but today we want to talk about the cover 19 temporary emergency standard so david and i will do this presentation together but i'll go ahead and start i think to start off with it's important to think about why the standard was enacted and what the purpose is to do so you see the the the quote from governor northam here it's keeping virginians safe at work is not only a critical part of stopping the spread of the virus but it's part of the economic recovery and it's the right thing to do and as we go through this as i was talking with clients over the past few weeks the initial reaction i got about from a lot of our clients was oh this is a pain why is virginia the only state in the whole country that's doing this you know why do we have these additional burdens and as we thought about it and talked through it with them i really seemed to came to see it as an opportunity for virginia employers it's an opportunity to take a lead and hopefully get ahead of covet it's an opportunity to let your employees know that you care about them and want to provide a safe work environment it's an opportunity to let your customers and clients know the same thing that you're having a safe environment for them to shop or buy your services so i think in that regard it's a real benefit for virginia employers and now what we have to to get through is one there's so many virginia employers out there who don't know that they have this requirement and two they don't know how to comply if they don't do know about it so that's really what we've tried to establish through our automated forms process that we'll talk about in a little bit um so just quickly the emergency temporary standard became effective july 27th a week from today july 26th most of the documents must be in place and businesses must be compliant i'll repeat that because most folks don't know that a week from today you need to have documentation in place and start working on compliance that is for most employers throughout the state for high risk employers there's additional training and an infectious uh preparedness plan that must be in place by september 25th um so and for folks that continue to join um use the chat function with any questions and we just got going so you didn't really miss much um number two applicability uh david want to talk about applicability a little bit sure uh so this new temporary standard is applicable to pretty much all virginia employers that are covered covered by the uh the soh now who is covered by the vsoh uh employers that are covered by the soh pretty much every single employer in virginia except for maritime employees contract based employers for the usps and any employers that are either employed in a government federal government facility or do contract work for the federal government uh in those three cases usually federal law applies and this this regulation does not uh cover you as an employer but if you are outside of these three categories then you are covered by this uh temporary standard and you have until next week to comply with the requirements you know and some of the questions that we've had from uh individuals and companies is i only have two employees do i still really need to do this the answer is yes or someone else might say i only have one employee you know and i have 10 part-time employees do i still need to do it the answer is yes another one is you know i'm a sole proprietor and i pay myself as a w-2 does it still apply if you're being paid as a w-2 the answer is yes so really is broad scope of applicability now that being said if you're a sole proprietor is the virginia occupational safety health department going to come to your home and you know ask to see this most likely not but technically it is applicable all right risk categories so i'll give a quick introduction then dave would give me some more details here so the risk categories and how the statute works is the the employers throughout virginia need to self-identify what sort of risk they have what is their industry what is the risk in conducting their business for covet exposure or spreading um so david won't you go from there sure so as you can see the uh the standard divides all employers into four different categories of risk like merit said so very high employers very high risk employers i should say these are employers who perform duties that work closely with persons who are suspected to have or are known to have covet 19 things such as specimen collections or surgeries or dental procedures usually also fall within this very high category anything that is aerosol generating the high category is a little bit less strict this category though is still mostly applicable to the medical field in things such as mental health providers nursing homes mortuary services things like things like that particularly employers who whose employees come into frequent contact with with a high number of people who may or may not have kova 19. the medium risk category i would say is the most overarching and the most encompassing of all the categories and i would say this is where most employers fall into this category it encompasses everything from pilots bus drivers bars spas gyms restaurants entertainment facilities and all of those employers who whose employees come into frequent contact with the general public within six feet of distancing the lower category is mostly office spaces and employers who whose employees avoid uh contact with the general public and even with uh their other co-workers within six feet it's places where you something like each employee has their own office space people can wear masks around the office and it's a very minimal interaction with with other people thank you um requirements for very high high and it's medium with 11 or more so how the the statute works is it provides two sort of large categories of documentation and things that you need to do and the forms generator that is how we've divided it also so for medium employees that have 11 or more employees you'd have some of the same requirements as very high and high uh employers uh so david want to talk about that a little bit also sure so as you can see these are some of the requirements that um very high high and medium with more than 11 employees have they do all of these categories of employers have mandatory sanitation protocols they have to provide specific uh sanitation equipment and very specific hand sanitizers and things like that they have to provide their employees with ppe and it has to be appropriate vp for the type of tasks that they are doing and they have they have to ensure that their employees are correctly wearing their ppe they also have to implement an infectious infectious disease prevention and preparedness and response plan and this is this handbook will serve as a guide for employers and employees on what the steps will be for the continuity of work if there is an uh an outbreak of coronavirus at the workplace uh i think this is the main distinction between this category so next i want to go on to medium or lower risk sure so these employers are gonna also gonna have to provide sanitation equipment they're gonna have to ensure at least six feet of six feet of distancing and they are going to have to ensure um proper ppe usage as well though employers within this category pp will likely just be face coverings uh maybe a little bit more and where required but it's usually just going to be face coverings good implementation so the implementation the like merit said earlier we have until august 26 to implement most of these documents aside from the infectious disease preparedness and response plan which employers have until september 25th to implement but it is a deadline that's coming up fast and employers need to be aware of it and then you have to the 25th for the infectious disease correct so and then quickly just penalties you know again the penalties can range from 13 000 to 135 depending on the severity i don't think a small employer who you know waits a week or two to put this plan in place is going to get dinged with such a penalty what's really going to happen is it's going to be an employee a customer a client who can makes a complaint and if there's ongoing or willful violations that's where you can really get some of these penalties um something to be very keep in mind so this gets us to sort of the emergency standard form generator that we've worked on as we've gone through some of the implementation here it really it can be confusing and for a lot of clients that we talked to they said okay well we need to put in some of these policies and procedures how do we do it um you know what sort of policies and procedures do we need how do we implement it how do we train our employees and all of those things and as we've talked to our clients um we figure there has to be an easier way to do it and that's what we tried to put together through this emergency standard form generator it provides through two or three simple questions determines whether your low medium or high risk category and then from there provides you all the documents that you need so for example the medium risk employers with more than 11 employees and the high-risk employers for 350 you you get the documents that you need to allow the company to comply with the regulations so you get an employer checklist this really works as a roadmap for the employer to think through what they need to do to comply with the statute you don't have to read the 50 plus page that you you don't have to figure out exactly what's required you have this roadmap you also have a roadmap for employees so they know what to do what's expected of them you have a return to work plan this is help uh you know as it says getting your employees back to work what to do after someone has been tested or has suspicion of covid you know how you bring them back into the workplace and there are two choices here we provided both options for the employers that buy this uh generator it's either um test based or symptom-based time based you know both of them are there part of the requirements of the statute is training for employees you know as we talked to clients they said how do we put together all these training materials what do we need to do so we put together a full training powerpoint that you need to share with your employees um you know and perhaps have your managers go through also very carefully uh for the high risk as we talked about also you have this infectious disease preparedness and response plan and then finally you have an employee acknowledgement form which is important for all employees to sign to acknowledge that they receive this put it into their personnel file for the medium risk with less than 10 employees or lower risk you have the same documentation except that you don't have the infectious disease so again this provides you a road map of how to comply with this regulation and how to make sure that you're really following instructions and best practices as required by the emergency temporary standard to have a a safer workplace for your employees and then for your customers and um uh clients um there is a duty report that dave rolling just talked about this quickly sure so all employers have a duty to report any positive cases that their employees might have so all employers have to report a positive case uh they have to maintain the anonymity of the employee within 24 hours to all fellow co-workers who worked with the infected employee the building owner or manager and the virginia department of health now if the employer has three or more positive cases within 14 days aside from reporting it to the above mentioned entities they also have to report it to the virginia department of labor and industry good um just quickly some reviews that we received um you know uh for sales as an estate sales company you know they wanted to thank us and say how easy it was um to take care of the forms and m3 technology is an i.t company uh who said that they were great and awesome and was really easy to utilize um questions some more information i think as we're sort of wrapping up here and going to some questions and i know there's some questions of the time chat function here also i think it's important to go back to what governor northam said the purpose here is to stop the spread and get virginia businesses back on track towards recovery and allow them to safely operate and allow the employees to come back to work knowing it's safe and customers and clients know also you know it provides that opportunity for virginia employers to lead the way back to safe workplaces and this uh virginia emergency standard forms generator that you know we've created really provides the opportunity for those employers to do this easily um and relatively inexpensively you know and you can go to com codecomplianceforms.com uh to uh access it and everything is there very simply to do um as i said we talked to a number of clients who have struggled with how and what they're supposed to do here and this really lays it out in a very simplistic manner um so that's really the the bulk of the the the presentation as i said probably 20 to 30 minutes with questions so we're almost at 20 minutes so i know we have a few questions here um in the chat function so while i start with that and then we could open up questions um on the telephones so number one the question was about a what about a government contractor so as a general rule government contractor you're in virginia is applicable to all virginian employers um so it doesn't matter if you're a government contractor or not now there is one exempt exception as we talked about earlier and i can go back to the form quickly right here employers located within federal facilities um could be exempt under the virginia occupation safety health plan so if you are just operating some of your employees within a federal facility you might not have the requirement there i imagine the federal facility has requirements they'll be doing themselves but if you have office space you know where you have management um and overhead employees you would still need to comply in that regard um and i don't know what i just did here um okay sorry about that all right so the next question our headquarters is in virginia and our contracts are outside of virginia does it just cover the employees at headquarters in hq um the answer is yes so really what you want to have here this is applicable to um employers and employees working in virginia so you know if you have offices outside of virginia the virginia statute is only applicable to what's happening within vir inia another question would you be able to send us this powerpoint if you send an email to us at the ves forms gcpc.com yes we'll be happy to send you the powerpoint uh another question we're headquartered outside of virginia and have one w-2 employee who works from home in virginia would we have to ensure this employee's home has these protocols in place you know that's that's where it sort of gets a little bit difficult because you just have the one w-2 employee the regulations are to protect you know employees in general technically speaking as we talked about yes if you have an employee who's working you're covered by the virginia occupational safety health regulations so the emergency standard is applicable um if they're just working from their home it is likely that it is a low-risk environment so it is simply um uh is simply um a cost of 250 to get these in place that being said i can't imagine there would be any investigation uh that would force you to do it um so i'll leave the discretion from there um someone just said the website's not working um david can you check that yes um and i'll check it right here too we can all do it together quickly um nope uh it seems like they're doing they're servicing the website right now oh okay the website might be down for a minute if you uh go to gcbc.com well here i'll provide you another there's another link although it should all be together um if you send me an email at this vs forms i'll make sure we provide you the correct link although this should be working and i apologize i'm not sure why it's not so um another question um would it hurt to send this employees outside of virginia are those that work at work at virginia federal sites to cover all bases protect all employees would it hurt no there are cdc guidelines that are in place and we're actually going to be providing a automated process to get those in place within the next few weeks um so what i might do is oftentimes you have laws in different states that are more stringent than other states you know california comes to mind a lot of their employment laws virginia more and more so now although than it used to be um what we often will do is say these are the legal requirements within virginia and were considering following them as a guideline within a different state but i would consider that on a case-by-case basis next question if you have a mix of employees medium and low risk do all employees need training on the infectious disease and awareness plan i think it depends on where folks are working so in other words if you are a a home nursing company you know clearly that is going to be a high risk and all the employees that are going out into people's homes need to be treated within that high risk category but then you also have an office staff where you're doing sales marketing accounting and other business functions that could be a low risk so really depends on the circumstances our employees that are going out to the high risk areas going back and forth you know is there um intermingling of the employees you know the safe thing to do would be comply with the high across the board um you know in that way you know it is you're doing what is safe and it shouldn't be that much of an additional impediment because all you really need to do is the infectious disease and preparedness plan and have that in place for the company so i think that is what i would recommend in that regard um send the training um can we not access the forms compliance without a fee um so within the uh virginia department of labor and then also the virginia safety and health on websites there is some of this information the actual regulation is there they do provide some guidance but what they don't do is customize it for you all they don't provide the employer and employee checklist that we provide you they don't provide the employee return to work forms with the different options to the same extent we do customize they don't have the employee acknowledgement forms so yes you can get this information somewhere else what we've figured out is that it's just a lot easier to know what you need to do by using the automated process it's either two hundred and three or three hundred fifty dollars you know we realized that if employers were going to a lawyers to get these it'd probably be two or three thousand dollars to get them on a case-by-case basis so we tried to create an affordable easy way for virginia employers to comply with this law so for the forms that we've created you can only get through our system next question was for an llc operated by an owner without a w-2 do we need to comply with the emergency temporary standard in that regard it doesn't seem as though you'd have any employees you know you're an owner but you're not an employee so in that circumstance i think technically you would not have to apply uh it would not be applicable next question if an employer has more than 11 employees but is otherwise considered low risk are they complete precluded from being considered a low risk no so what happens is if you're in the medium category let's say a gym you know or something along those lines or restaurants there is 11 or more is whether or not you're in the higher risk or the lower risk if you're in a lower risk office place an architecture firm a cpa firm you know a law firm you know it doesn't matter how many employees you have you'll still be within that lower risk um next question um was a continuation of the one before as it related to uh an llc with just a single owner and no employees so we've already answered that and then um here's another question as an exec executive administrator do we need to be looking for similar requirements from each state if they're employees in other states so virginia is the first and only state that has implemented um mandatory requirements in this regard governor and governor northam when he made the announcement about this said since the federal government is not stepping in and providing these regulations virginia is going to do so um i don't know if other states are going to i anticipate that they will especially if uh the virus gets worse this fall in any manner but what i would do in other states is look to comply with cdc regulations and guidelines as i said within the next two weeks we'll probably have some automated documents to help you do that also so we can check back or we'll send out an email when that is done next question was thank you for developing and providing this on an affordable basis well thank you very much that wasn't even my mom who said that so thank you next when you're referring to low medium high risk etc does the company as a whole get that rating or can we rate the contracts different sites based of what we feel they do headquarters works at home one of our contracts goes to the office works around people um i think it really depends on the circumstances you know i think you need to consider is there much intermingling if you will of the employees who someone who are low somewhere which are high if there is i think the safe course of action is to have high across the board especially since the additional requirement is not terribly onerous just having to develop the um infectious preparedness plan um you know which might be a good practice anyway so i think i'll look at the circumstances and and go from there another question is it applicable to the company that lower risk has less than 11 employees so if you have any employees at all you need to comply so for that lower risk company with less than 11 employees you just need to do the lower risk requirements next question and thank you for all the questions which entity will be conducting audits to ensure that virginia employers are compliant you know i have not read anywhere that there will be audits and i don't know if david you've seen anything in that regard also i think it's more going to be employees customers will file complaints with the virginia occupational safety health or the department of labor if they think that employers are not complying i think that's where the risk is um david do you agree uh there is a chance that the virginia department of labor and industry would conduct random audits but uh as of now uh it is mostly based on employee complaints and then where can we report if employers uh are not compliant with the emergency contemporary standard uh i imagine i don't know it off top of my head but on the department of labor or the virginia occupational safety and health website i imagine there is a mechanism there for reporting purposes um so that is all the questions we have on the chat function um does anyone have on the telephone call a question that has not been addre has not been addressed that we could help with i'm not hearing anyone so i know we addressed a whole bunch of questions um if anyone has any questions at all please email us at the vs forums gcbc.com um you know if we can help in any manner please let us know i hope you all find this helpful um discount code um if you you can receive a 10 discount if you use the um code referral on caps so r-e-f-e-r-r-a-l all on caps referral and you can use that for yourselves and a few friends family colleagues you know competitors other businesses that you know you can give them that discount code also to get the 10 discount off the forms so it makes it a little bit more affordable for everyone although we did prices in a manner that we thought any and all virginia employers can utilize it to keep it relatively inexpensive so hearing no questions let's see i might have a few more chat questions um thank you um um i will send out um here let me do one thing so to go to um the the it looks like we're having some different technical difficulties here um go to gcpc.com so george charliepetercharley.com if you have any questions you go to that website go under resources and the forms generator is there i apologize tremendously it also should be on the email that you all received um announcing this webinar um so i apologize if the the coveredcomplianceforms.com is not working right now um but please uh you know let me know and we can go from there um and you can go gcpc.com uh looks like we have one or two more questions you know and also again i apologize if vasforms.com at gcpc is not working you can always send an email to info gcpc.com and we'll get to that also another question our company is more than 11 employees but by answering no to both additional questions it populates the 250 package so if you are in the low risk category even though you have more than 11 employees you'll still be within that 250 package so you'll be fine in that regard another question one of the business choices on the page where the forms don't apply um you know then most likely you're going to be in that lower risk um so i think you you you go from there if you have a particular question again email us at you know info gcpc.com or ves forms gcpc.com um all right i think that we're about done we haven't had any questions let me see here let me try one more thing all right does anyone have any questions from the audience it looks like i'm working to unmute folks that's working um all right last question oh um there you go try that cobincomplianceplans.com and thank you all let me go ahead and stop now thank you take care and hopefully if you need any help please let us bye-bye