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so lots of questions out there there's lots of opportunity to ask us any questions throughout thanks everyone that did email me questions in advance as well and she will try to address as many of those as possible I know it's a confusing time you're getting information from all over the place and it's hard to make sense of it all so we're gonna try to help ease some of that today so about our presenter Bethany Sweeney joins us from Pat st. Pat Sangster pardon me where she has nearly 20 years of labor and employment law experience she focuses her practice on advising employees on a wide range of employment related issues including employee handbooks and employment policies independent contractor agreements disciplinary matters discrimination and harassment issues disability and litigation avoidance in the course of providing legal advice Bethany conducts training seminars such as this one an employment law to employers and supervisors on a variety of topics as well as conducting workplace investigations so please join me in joining Bethany thanks Stephanie and everyone hear me can you hear me ok ok so thank you for joining me this morning I must say in my almost 20 years of experience I've never honestly dealt with anything like this nor have any of you I'm sure so we're all kind of getting through this together and trying to deal with daily changes and executive orders and other issues so we will we'll jump right in I just want to say I apologize in advance if anybody hears my phone I can keep my children quiet but the dog is another story when the jogger runs by so let's get started and as Stephanie had said you know please feel free to jump in if you have questions I'm happy to take questions as we go as well as try and answer the ones that had been in sent in before so today we're going to talk about bringing our employees back to work during the Cova 19 pandemic so where we at obviously these are challenging times but it's still a global pandemic we're in Michigan here we're still at a stay home order until at least May 28th although I did hear some rumblings that potentially that might get extended but as we see she's slowly opening up the state executive orders are being rescinded and reissued on a near-daily basis I can say I was working on this presentation based on one executive order and yesterday afternoon it was rescinded and the new one was in place so as you struggle we struggle with trying to keep up you know Michigan is slowly starting to open up but of course we're all going to have to adapt to a new normal and what we saw before the pandemic is now what we're going to see after for a long time if ever so today there's four issues that I would like to talk about the first would be bringing employees back to work then we want to talk about what the workplace is going to look like obviously with the executive order that just came out 2020 - 97 which is kind of a play off of 77 and 91 she's very the governor is very specific about what a workplace needs to look like and we're going to go through that because as we'll talk about violations of her order could result in my OSHA violation so I think it's important that we really get a handle and kind of what the governor is expecting of workplaces once they open up we're going to go through the families first coronavirus response X so the FF CRA will do a quick refresher on that as employers are coming employees are coming back to work it may not have affected you before but it may be affecting you now and then we're going to talk about Michigan executive order 2020 - 36 which is her order that you can't retaliate against employees who need to stay home because they're sick I think that's an important one to kind of touch on as well so we'll get started so recalling employees so there's kind of a couple considerations here as the employer so are you going to open up your business and bring everybody back or are you going to do more of maybe a phased reopening so you might be bringing people back in shifts you might be still furloughing people you might be bringing people back on a reduced schedule are they all going to come back or so I'm going to be continued to work remotely so I think when you're thinking about who you're going to call back to work I think it's kind of a global consideration as to who you would be calling back and so if you're gonna do a phased reopening so if your first if you're going to do everybody at the same time that's obviously a little easier but what you might need to think about is is everybody be gonna be back full-time or is everybody gonna be back on a reduced schedule I have sat in on a webinar that Michigan uia the unemployment insurance agency had done and they had discussed their work share program which would also provide some help potentially for employers who may want to allow their employees to work a reduced schedule and still collect some unemployment benefits so they would encourage you if you're not planning and if you bring everybody back but maybe you can't do it full-time to consider the work share program under michigan uia so that said if we're doing a phased reopening so you know first you want to think about you have any other policies for recall rates you have handbooks policies that might play into this I will assume that most of you are not unionized employers and therefore you're not going to have a union recall rates but you might want to think about if there is some sort of policy that would guide you and of course you need to be following any policies that you may have in place you also want to be thinking back about who are you going to bring back first so if you're going to do it in a phased reopening who's who's the first group I would suggest that you're going to consider objective measures maybe look at seniority maybe you're gonna look at a merit so your high performers want to bring them back first the problem is when you start getting the subjective determinations I like her I don't really like him that that's when you start getting into that area of potential discrimination so any decision that you're going to make you're going to have to justify with a legitimate business reason as to why you made the determination as to who to bring back and why and when so take care that your decision as to to recall is not discriminatory and don't consider any protected category so you want to take care as the protected categories under Elliot Larsen Civil Rights Act or title 7 so we want to be careful about age or race or gender we'll talk in a minute about the whole age concept because we know with kovat 19 that older individuals are more susceptible or more in a high-risk category and so how would you handle maybe bringing back the 67 year old and obviously disability discrimination can come into play as well if you don't want to bring back somebody because you're afraid that they might contract the virus I would suggest to the extent you're doing a phase reopening that you're going to be sending recall letters to your employees you're calling them back to work you want to be able to get in writing with them when you expect them to report who they would be reporting to maybe what their hourly rate is if anything may have change let's say there might be a reduction in pay or they might have different hours because you need to conform to the Mandate of the executive order and their hours changed you might want to put that in the letter so the letter really is a way to share with your employee what they should expect to come back to work it's also a way that you're getting and in writing that you're recalling employees because we'll talk about in a second the situation where what happens if I call my employee back to work and they don't want to come back to work then what do we do and I get calls from employers all the time about they don't want to come back what do I do now so you would want to get a recall to work letter making sure that they know that there is work available for them and when they would be reporting need to report who they would report to you know probably have them sign off on the letter and then if they refuse or they don't show up and how would you handle that going forward you would also want to then alert the uia so unemployment as to who has been called back and who is actually returning to work so that their unemployment would then cease so what are you going to do if your employee refuses to return to work I'm telling you this is a really I deal with this three or four or five times a week you're the employer you have the right to tell your employees that they have to come back so if you're ready to open and they don't want to come back you have the right to make them come back now this is not a situation where the situation where let's say they have a childcare issue that they need to do it that's a different situation but if it's just you're a pulley who's not dealing with child care who is not experiencing symptoms of Kovan 19 you can call them back and have the expectation that they will return if they don't you can make them use any accrued vacation or PTO under your policy you can I would most definitely document any of their refusal to return to work I mean this is important you want to keep a paper trail as it would be with any situation with your employees but you definitely want to be keeping track of when you called him back what their response was did they come back doesn't become a disciplinary situation then if they have refused to return to work would you address it under your attendance policy how would you address you know is it a write-up does it become a voluntary resignation if they fail to return you actually have to consider any special circumstances so is the person in a high risk category are they over 65 you know a lot of the things that we hear is oh well I lived with so-and-so and that person's in a high res so I don't want to come back but you want to you want to really kind of be looking you want to be careful this let me caution you so I think that when this all passion is that this is going to be an area that is going to be right for litigation for employees that believe that they were treated unfairly either they were forced to come back or they refused to come back or they retaliated against I just think it's going to be a hotbed of litigation so it really need to take steps to be careful and how you're bringing your employees back and kind of looking at the whole panoply of if they're saying they can't come back and having the conversation of you know why can't you come back or what's the issue that's preventing you from returning you want to be as flexible as possible maybe bringing them back but putting them on an unpaid leave as a possibility and I would suggest to you that termination would be a last resort and definitely consult with your counsel before anybody is terminated for a failure return to work during the pandemic I have I have worked with employers who have terminated employees who have just simply refused I've had employees call people back employers call employees back put it on an unpaid leave of absence and that gets them off of the unemployment and gets them back on the employers payroll although they're not paying them so this is the biggest one I think that we're hearing right now is what if the employee refuses to return to work because they're getting more money on unemployment so right being on unemployment right now is a very lucrative situation so you'd be collecting up to three hundred and sixty two dollars from the state of Michigan and then you're going to get another six hundred dollars under the federal cares Act although the cares Act does end at the end of July so that stream of money at this point should be cut off it's unclear if there will be additional money coming from the federal government to supplement uninsurance unemployment insurance but staying home and collecting unemployment is not a legitimate reason to stay at home if that is the only reason that your employee is giving you then you should feel comfortable having the conversation with them that there's work available you're refusing available work that will we will report it to you ia if they continue to stay home when there's available work and click unemployment that's potential unemployment fraud obviously right now with as overwhelmed as unemployment is do we know if they're going to take action we don't know they should if you have employees that are refusing so I think you're just gonna again this is maybe is another one of those situations that you're going to consult with your counsel but definitely think about how you're going to handle any refusal from your employees to return to work simply because they want to collect unemployment some employees so the other situation we see a lot of is they don't want to come back because they're afraid that they're going to contract over 19 in the workplace again this is also not a legitimate reason to stay home although we can maybe understand an employee's fear of contracting the virus and I think there's a whole bunch of psychological issues with kovat 19 and the reopening of the country and the state and workplaces simply because they're afraid to return to work is not a legitimate reason it's nothing it's not a protected category and again it's going to have to be you having a conversation with your employee as to really what's going on and is there a way that you can get them back to work so you know what you want to be doing is again once we start talking about the governor's executive order 97 you're going to see all of the things that are expected of the workplace to keep it safe and clean and disinfected but you really want to be explaining to your employees any safety measures that you're taking to keep the business safe you want to be looking at the directives of the CDC of OSHA you know any executive orders from the state of Michigan if there's no hazard in your workplace because you're taking all the steps necessary you don't have a reported covered let's say and the person is just being they're just not comfortable then there's really no basis for them to return to work and if you've never had a kovat case tell them that tell them that you know we we haven't had one and our expectation is that there's no current safety hazard and that you will return to work so I'd mentioned this earlier I've had this question before take great care with your over 60 population to the extent you have any employees who are over 60 you the EEOC so we know that's the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission which addresses federal violations of or violations of federal law such as title seven the Americans with Disabilities Act the Americans the Age Discrimination in Employment Act the EEOC has been pretty active during kovat nineteen and it's really kind of loosened some of their ABA standards but they came out and we're very clear that you cannot exclude it from the workplace an employee who's 65 or older if they don't have any kovetz symptoms simply because they've been identified as being at a higher risk of illness so you need to think carefully with your older population how you're going to handle bringing those employees back i had one case where the employer called and they were concerned because they thought the employee was high risk and they didn't want to bring that employee back the employee had not expressed any concern about coming back but the employer was concerned because she had had some health conditions that they were aware of again that could lead to a regarded as claim of disability discrimination that he regard them is disabled and didn't bring them back I'm so again think carefully don't make a decision for your employees that you are not going to bring them back it really is a conversation not a directive and the National liber8 National Labor Relations Act we understand that's the act that you know really people think of it with unions and the NLRB but it is it's the act that even governs non-union workplaces so you also want to take care if you have a group of employees who refuse to return to work are they under section seven obviously they have employees have the right to engage in protected concerted act
vity relative to their job so you know potential complaints about workplace safety or pay that's what you might see if you have a group of employees who bring it to your attention that they're afraid of returning to work because of safety concerns that's kind of what we're seeing in some situations so just please take care that if you get a group of employees that are refusing to return that you kind of you want to sit down with them and have that conversation why are you refusing and maybe it's the conversation that you had with people that are afraid of contracting Cove at 19 that you are following all guidelines and there really is no basis for them to refuse to return to work and I will say this with these employees you want to you want to be careful again employees are very concerned about their safety and about with social media obviously I have seen plenty of social media posts regarding you know my employer is making me come back to work I don't think it's safe the governor hasn't allowed that group of employees to return yet we don't think we're essential workers people are very vocal during this pandemic about returning to work and what they might perceive is some sort of unfairness to them so don't don't underestimate the power of social media that your company will be out there in the social media if you have an unhappy group of employees social media has really changed how we are looking at Kovan 19 and employee issues right now so I'll stop for a minute Stephanie are there any questions that came up section one there are none in the chat feature would anyone like to ask a verbal question okay tristar Trust Bank if I could it's all most of everything we just covered was you know sent them home and other consideration of when do you say we are recalling or or now it covered all four employers who have [Music] Stephanie wonder also all telling me you can go you can move on I'll type it okay thank you sorry okay so though what is the workplace going to okay so I see one came out how about qualified knowledge of kidney disease congestive heart failure to the extent the question is asking that you know that employee has kidney disease or congestive heart failure again that's exactly what the CD the EOC is saying is simply because you know that an employee may be in a high-risk category you can't refuse to bring them back or you can't you know those are the kinds of groups that you need to take care with and have the conversation you know I just did this with another group that there was a recall for next week everybody was coming back to work next week if the person if these individuals were unable to return they were going to need to produce a return to work you know a note from their doctor as to the reasons why they couldn't return and when they anticipated they could return or they were going to have to engage in the interactive process and see if there was some sort of accommodation but the issue was put back on the employee to explain to the employee why they were unable to return um obviously what you don't want to be doing is searching out your employees and saying hey you know I know you have kidney failure or congestive heart failure you know we think that's kind of a you know we understand that to be putting you in high-risk we don't really want you coming back that's the last thing you want to be doing so again it's having that conversation with your employees you okay okay so we're gonna move on to Ben I haven't seen your question pop-up so I will address it when I see it um what will the workplace look like I think the workplace is gonna look incredibly different than what it looks like now so we're all sitting in our you know studies or somewhere in our homes but even when we get back to work our offices are going to be very different than when we left them you so we're gonna talk now about executive order 2020 - 97 mm-hmm so I'm I may 18th just a couple days ago governor Whitmer had issued executive order 2020 91 and then as I said yesterday she rescinded that and issued 2020 - 97 and then part that was because she had announced yesterday that she was allowing additional businesses to open up such as retail by appointment or dental offices so she had rescinded 2020 - 91 there now we're dealing with 2020 - 97 and so I think really if you kind of look at 2020 97 or its entirety it's really about looking at how to keep the workplaces clean and disinfected maintaining social distancing guidelines and communicating with your employees I think that is is going to be really a key feature of this is communicating with your employees as to how to work now in our new workplaces the new normal and so 97 is an enforceable enforceable set of workplace standards that apply to all businesses across the state it applies to all businesses that are permitted to require their that if you can work now if your business has been opened up or if your business is going to be opened up in the future and she specifically addresses offices in the order so we'll talk about that I can say that 97 was similar to 91 which was similar to 77 so the guidelines that she is offering are similar as we move forward so I I think they get tweaked maybe with each executive order but the general reasoning or her general mandates are the same in in all orders the important thing to note - about 97 and also 91 is these standards are intended to have the force and effective agency rules which means these are no violations of my OSHA so if you are not following the mandates of e o 97 and somebody shows up from my OSHA and you could be in potential violation of a my OSHA standard so this isn't simply the governor's recommendation as to what businesses need to do going forward but it's really this is what businesses must do going forward and as we go through you can also obviously pull up a copy of the order it's long I think it's 12 pages executive order 97 but there are places that you're going to have to maintain documentation as well so things like keeping records of the Cova nitrene training that you provide to your employees these daily entry self screenings that you're going to have to do with your employees and confirmed cases of koban 19 in your workplace and the required steps that you took pursuant to this executive order so this is this is taken directly from her order I wanted this to be as clear as I could for people so that there was no confusion this is not my interpretation but this is what governor Whitmer is telling businesses they must do pursuant to executive order 2020 - 97 and you may have seen some of these and you may have already been started to do some of these things so if you have you know that's great so the first thing you're going to need to do is develop a code 19 preparedness and response plan which would be consistent with OSHA guidelines so we'll talk about this briefly later in the presentation the guidance is available I've given you the link to the guidance it does walk you through what you would want to have in your plan the new twist with this order is it has to be a made available to all your employees and your customers she wants it made available website internal network or hide copy and so for the businesses that are opening now or have been opened it has to be available by June 1st or it has to be within two weeks of resuming in-person activities if this is an issue that you would need assistance drafting a preparedness plan you know there's something that I would be able to assist you with they don't have to be long but you are definitely advised that you need to have one in place a new one here is also that you have to designate a work site supervisor who's going to implement your plan it can be more than one person but you need to have somebody that has been designated to take care of implementing your response plan they're going to have to provide training to all your employees so at a minimum you're going to have to deal with workplace infection control practices how to use personal protective equipment I know there have been a question about what personal protective equipment is personal protective equipment changes depending on it's not the same for every industry so for us office workers there's a mandate that we all have mass I'm cloth mass or potentially face shields if you cannot maintain six-foot social distancing but you know other we're not talking about n95 mask we're not talking about safety goggles we're not talking about you know steel toed boots so it's really for our purposes cloth masks and potentially face shields you want to take care because if you start requiring your employees to wear mass such as an n95 or any other sort of mask don't fall under the purview of OSHA and what a mask is a simple cloth mask that something to cover your face is not going to invoke OSHA or any OSHA standards but it's simply a way to spread the stop the spread hopefully of kovat 19 so under your training you're going to also have two steps that an employee has to take if they have kovat 19 or a suspected or confirmed diagnosis and how the employee can report unsafe working conditions yes another one is you're going to have to conduct daily entry self screening protocol for all your employees and so really what employers are doing is they're coming up with a daily checklist it really can just be as simple as three questions are you experiencing any of the symptoms of kovat 19 have you been in contact with anybody who has who has Cova 19 or have you been you know traveling anywhere that would have been like a high-risk you know hotspot so but you're going to be required to do this every day for all of your employees and it appears from the order that that is one of the areas that you're going to have to keep records of so just remember these are medical records see there's a couple chance I do not believe that face masks are considered PPE yes so again it all is going to depend on ru if we're talking about offices as you'll see in the order she is requiring and she is requiring the governor is requiring you to have a cross face mask that is not I do not believe that would fall under what personal protective equipment is I think personal protective equipment here would be more of the n95 or face shield type things but again that is something that you know the CDC guidelines will probably be able to provide a better explanation I will say that her order relies heavily I'm a CDC and so it is best to be looking at CDC guidelines or OSHA guidelines as to how they would define personal protective equipment but what you're going to see is she is requiring the governor's requiring the use of face masks at work and as I was saying the training and the daily self screening are things that you're going to need to keep track of well just keep in mind you are really kind of you are collecting medical information about your employees which the a DA is allowing us to do right now but you're going to want to maintain confidentiality to the extent you may be choosing to take somebody's temperature which you are allowed to do you are also allowed to test for covert 19 if you have the capabilities and you want to screen everybody every day before they come into the workplace to test for koban 19 you are allowed to do that but remember that is personal medical information and you need to keep it confidential I would keep it in a separate folder than their personnel file I would also make sure that you have it to the extent somebody comes knocking on your door looking for it that you are able to produce it and meaning my OSHA or another agency you also need consideration when you're doing these things if you have non-exempt employees who are paid hourly these are things that you would have to consider are you going to be paying them for their time spent standing in line to get tested to get their paper to take in to be part of these say the daily self screenings another mandate of the order is everybody has to stay six feet from one another and I think we've all seen this now in stores in the grocery store the the ground markings X stand here then the next one is six feet apart signs physical barriers I know at my grocery store there are the Plexiglas in between the self-checkout lines so that your there's a barrier between you and the person next to you since they're not six feet apart so you're going to be having to consider that if you're a bank obviously and you're you're going to have customers coming back into your lobby to use your inside services you know you're going to have to be considering what kind of ground markings you're going to have for your customers when they come in you're gonna have to provide nine medical-grade face coverings you are required as the employer to provide those you know our building is in the Renaissance Center our office you have to show up with a face covering you answer their three questions they'll take your temperature if you pass their test they then provide you with a face covering that you are required to wear and that's just the screening to get into the Renaissance Center in Detroit and the governor through her order is requiring face coverings to be worn when employees cannot consistently maintain six feet of separation and she also says you might want to consider face shields if you cannot consistently maintain three feet of separation from others so again something to think about when you're thinking about your workplace and how you're going to handle you know implementing these requirements I think a big one here is increasing your cleaning your and disinfecting so you want to be thinking about high touch surfaces so you're thinking about door handles computers you know the refrigerator in the in the lunchroom so anything that's a high touch you want to be disinfecting and of course any shared equipment should be disinfected so as a company you're gonna have to adopt protocols to clean and disinfect your facility in the case there is a positive Kovan 19 case so what are you going to do if you bring everybody back and somebody reports that they have coated how are you going to handle that as a as a company to get your facility cleaned the order also mandates that you make cleaning supplies available to your employees upon entry obviously you want to provide them time to wash their hands you could also provide hand sanitizer for your employees as necessary although good luck cleaning some of these things but you're going to have to again missus to the point that I had made earlier that this really her order really is about disinfecting so making sure that your employees have the ability to keep their hands clean a new big one is if you have an employee that's been identified with a confirmed case of kovat you have to within 24 hours notify both the local public health department and anybody that has come in contact with the person with the confirmed case of covent 19 and so what we have recommended in the past prior to the issuance of these executive orders is should you have an employee that discloses to you that they have covin you need to have a private conversation with that employee as to who they may have been in contact at the workplace and then you want to explained here those individuals so that person will get sent home the person with kovat and then any individual that that person may have come in contact with you would probably want to send you would send them home as well that's how we have done it and again we're talking about confidential medical information this isn't one of those things that you say hey you know Susie has it and we know that you were sitting with Susie and you're not identifying the individual that has it but you're just it's a simple we believe that you may have been exposed at some point in the workplace and we recommend that you go get tested she has in the order allow employees with a confirmed or suspected case of Co vid to return to the workplace only after they are no longer infectious and that's according to the latest guidelines from the CDC which are in a later slide which we can talk about briefly but it's going to be three days or seven days or 14 days so I have provided the guidelines from the CDC but again in times of uncertainty look to the CDC guidelin
s when you're trying to adhere to this order because that is what a governor whitmer is relying upon for the mandates of this order you have to follow e-o 2020 - 36 which is the executive order I addressed earlier that prohibits discharging disciplining otherwise were telling you against employees who have to stay home or have to leave work when they have coded you're going to have to establish a response plan for dealing with a confirmed infection in the workplace you want to restrict business-related travel for employees to essential travel only so that's business-related travel so you're going to have to review your policies regarding travel and know there had been some questions about employees that were traveling to work I am not aware of any restrictions in Michigan Ohio or Indiana that would prohibit an employee from traveling from their home to work I would think that would be considered essential I'm not aware that there is also any requirement to quarantine in any of those states that you've traveled but that you are allowed to freely travel between those states for purposes of getting to and from work so with 20 27 or 20 20 20 - 97 you want to encourage your employees to use the PPE and hand sanitizer on public transportation that one is a little odd to me to the extent and when we talked about earlier about how are you bringing your employees back there are still suggesting promoting remote work to the fullest extent possible and then adopting any additional infection control measures although I think you know a through Q pretty much covers everything I'm not sure what else is out there and so just you know those are the mandates for all office for all businesses so let's just briefly look at um office settings so she has also in this order set forth what offices must do so you're going to have to have a dedicated entry point for all employees because you don't want a lot of congestion at the main entrance so the idea here is that you're not having everybody show up for work at the same time trying to get it to say in the same door and having to go through these self screenings so you want to figure out how to get your employees in the building again this is going to be in Clerk appropriate spacing for employees outside so again the six foot markers they are suggesting maybe you want to think about staggering start times or adapting some type of rotational schedule so that again like I said not everybody's showing up at the same time you want to require face coverings in shared spaces restrooms hallways I don't interpret her order as saying everybody needs to sit in their office with a mask on but to the extent you're in an open space or an area where you might come in touch in contact with other employees that the man the order is telling you you need face coverings on your employees you want to increase distancing turn off water fountains prohibit social gatherings and meetings provide disinfecting supplies and you want to she's requiring that employees wipe down their workstations at least twice daily to disinfect their work area posting signs about the importance of personal hygiene I think that might be something that employers were doing anyways prior to the this mandate you want a disinfect high touch surfaces so again we've seen some of these when she was talking generally about disinfecting but for offices obviously you want to be looking specifically in your office as to what are the high touch surfaces and disinfecting them as possible you want to have cleaning and communications protocols if the employees are sent home again kind of protocol are you gonna have if somebody reveals that they've tested positive for covin suspend all non-essential visitors and restrict non-essential travel so that is that's the mandates of 97 that covers businesses in general and offices in particular I highly recommend that everybody take a few minutes and read through the mandates of 97 I'm gonna touch briefly on a couple other ones I'll take some questions um I'll look at the I see there's some questions that have popped up I'm the same day she issued 20/20 - 91 she also issued executive directive 2020 - 0-6 so she has now created a director of code 19 workplace security so basically this is somebody that is just monitoring workplaces for compliance so when I tell you that I think that this is going to become an issue and keeping track of companies I do think with this creation of the director of covert 19 workplace safety that I do think that they are going to take this seriously it says the departments and agencies are required to publicly post citations of those employers that fail to follow the rules adopted in 2020 91 which would now be 97 it was interesting I had got an email from the Michigan Manufacturers Association that they think that that you know civil penalties up to 70,000 and I put this in here just because the MMA has a good relationship with the governor's office and to the extent they are suggesting to their clients that the governor is going to take this seriously I share with you that the governor is going to take this seriously so I would suggest as I said so this is what an OSHA preparedness plan would include the link that I provide will take you to what a plan looks like that is something that you know I could assist you with my friend can assist you with putting one together if you don't have one just note that executive order provides that it be consistent with OSHA guidance and that all staffs will it be necessary for every company but just make sure that you tailor it for your business and be something that your employees will actually follow I also included information here about CDC guidelines for returning to work there is the link that it will take you to what governor Whitmer is referring to and so basically if you have symptoms you have to wait three days have passed since recovery and at least ten days that passes the symptoms first appeared if you don't have any symptoms but you have a confirmed case you can return to work after at least 10 days have passed since the positive test but if you are asymptomatic you test positive and you develop symptoms and go back to the previous slide about 3 days and 10 days I'm just provided some additional guidance and cleaning and disinfecting my OSHA has released some new guidance and then I also caution you to be aware of any County's guidelines so wash not Oakland Wayne may have their own guidelines as to what a workplace needs to do to be in conformity with their orders this is um kind of a guidance from the CDC that might be helpful and Stephanie I don't know if you're planning to to share the slides but certainly if people are interested in the slides or something that I'm not sure if they'll be available to the members but that's something that we can I can provide to people if they're interested in the slides and due to the links that might be helpful that'd be great very little fool okay communicating your plans we don't I mean the point of this is really is it's communication is key whether it's communicating with your employees as to bringing them back into the office or communicating with them about how you're going to keep them safe once they're in the office so let me see what came in I'm Katie require an employee to stay home for 14 days I think you want to take care if there is no requirement that they self quarantine but you're requiring them to self quarantine and use their own PTO or or on you know it's not paid you just want to be careful your reasoning for that simply because if you're taking away money that could be considered an adverse employment action and if there's no quarantine order in place that somebody has to self quarantine after travel and you make somebody and then not pay them use me I think that you could you could bump up against an adverse employment action or a retaliation claim I mean potentially they could go on unemployment but you're only looking at a 14 day period when I say come and contact with somebody contact of course the CDC defines it but I think if you are like contact meaning you're standing next to them if you're 6 feet away from them then and that's not considered contact and travel to meet with a prospective client be considered essential yeah I would think it is because if you're working and you're traveling for essential business to meet with a client and the client is part of your business and I believe that would be considered essential although I would suggest probably under current guidelines at least in the state of Michigan to the extent you could have a remote or zoom meeting or some other sort of video conferencing that would probably be recommended over traveling in to a face-to-face meeting but clearly if a face-to-face meeting is what you need to do then then I would think that you would be able to make look it all comes down to can you provide a legitimate business reason for the actions that you're taking and if you can justify your actions you know then you should be able to proceed with conducting your business you I don't understand critical workers exemptions for people who are asymptomatic I'm not sure what that question means when if an employee refuses to marry masks send them home if the governor is mandating through executive order 2020 - 97 that you have to wear a mask and employers refusing to wear masks that to me is a disciplinary issue because basically you're on the line is the employer if somebody were to come to your office and check in and see what that you're in compliance and you don't have employees wearing them or somebody reports it hey I work at you know X Y & Z and they're not making their employers wear a mask but you know my friends at this other Bank have to again social media I think that's a disciplinary issue unless the person can explain to you why because you know her order says if you um can medically tolerate it so again we've all seen the videos of the people that can't wear masks into a store allegedly into Costco or a grocery store and they're claiming it's because of a medical reason so just take care when you're having these conversations if somebody tells you that they can't wear a mask that you know why they can't one of the questions we should ask our employees or ensure they have [Music] I mean you need to be having if your employee is asking you you call them back mm-hmm and they don't want to come back there they're going to tell you why they don't want to come back most likely if they just say I don't want to come back then you're going to have to it's kind of like having the interactive process right on an ad a claim you're gonna have to have a conversation with your employees as to you know why they don't want to come back or why they do want to come back and clearly there's a lot of communication that's going to be going down in the next few weeks a few months with your employees so that you can be in 97 I don't know if a brand's considered a retail store I think that's still up in the air somebody wants to know if a salon is considered a retail store so my guess would be a retail store is Best Buy REI those kinds of big-box stores I don't my guess would be a branch is not considered a retail store but I don't know that definitively it's not been defined well I know where you know I can go over a little if that's okay Stephanie but I'll try and speed up because I know it's already 5 to 12 and I don't I want to be respectful of your time so familiesfirst coronavirus response act we all know that that was the Act passed by Congress and signed into law back in late March early April that's going to provide emergency paid sick leave our emergency FMLA for your employees and there are two components to it so if you're an employer with less than 500 employees you have to provide paid sick leave or emergency medical la it's effective through December 31st of 2020 to collect money on either one of these your employees have to be able to not work or telework and small businesses with fewer than 50 employees may qualify for an exemption I know that I have had some clients who had less than 50 employees and have asked about that and you're just going to have to be able to document that providing these emergency FMLA our emergency paid sick would jeopardize the value ability the business as a going concern that's the language that the that the Department of Labor is looking for as to why you wouldn't be able to provide it but I think what they're going to tell you is because it's you know tax dollars that you get back that they would expect that you would be able to provide it so just as a refresher the only reason you can take the emergency FMLA is because your employee can at work or telework due to childcare needs so that means at school or daycare has been closed due to koban 19:00 that's the only reason you can take emergency FMLA there are six reasons why you could take emergency paid sick leave so we are subject to a quarantine order you've been advised to self quarantine you're experiencing covin 19 symptoms and are seeking a medical diagnosis you're caring caring for a quarantined individual you have child care needs or this kind of catchphrase that the Secretary of Health and Human Services has never defined so we kind of say six really is kind of a non-issue so far I'm okay so again the refreshing so under the emergency FMLA your employees are entitled to twelve weeks of leave the first two weeks would be unpaid although the employee can use their emergency paid stick to cover the first two weeks of the emergency FMLA and then the remaining ten weeks would be paid at two third the employees regular rate of pay now remember that's capped at $200 a day and ten thousand in the aggregate the employee has to have been employed at least 30 calendar days and it can be used intermittently but that's something that the employer and the employee have to agree to and the DOL imagines a situation whereby maybe you're married your spouse can do or your partner can cover childcare in the morning and you have to cover it in the afternoon or maybe you have to cover it once or twice a week so that's kind of what the DOL envisions when they talk about intermittent the emergency paid sick leave now remember there's the six reasons so um reasons 1 through 3 which would be quarantine basically the quarantine with the symptoms that you are personally experiencing those are paid at your regular rate of pay which is kept at 511 per day 5110 in the aggregate and then reasons four through six which is caring for our quarantine individual or child care needs those are paid at two thursday employees regular rate of pay capped at $200 a day or 2,000 in the aggregate this is a big one right now that we're coming to the end of the school year so the Department of Labor has clarified that once the school year is technically over the EPS L and yes I'm Ali are really not available unless you would have to take leave because your child summer care provider is unavailable due to covent 19 and so the the reason or the fact that the school may be closed is becomes a non-issue once the school year ends but now if your what you may have done with your children during the summer if bad is closed because of koban 19th and that would be a reason that you could use the emergency FMLA and the emergency paid sick they have been a huge question with employers but the DOL just answered I'm gonna point util on this page this the Department of Labor puts out these questions and answers I think we're up to 93 questions now you know frequently asked questions about the FS CRA it's excellent and it's always being updated we started with 11 questions and so we're up to 93 so again that website will be very helpful to you going forward with questions about the implementation of the FF CRA and if you want to point out that there's a notice like every other notice you have to post in Michigan there's a notice regarding the FF CRA that will have to be posted I have had my firm personally it was emailed to us because none of us are we're all working remotely so you might want to think about emailing it to your employees but once business is open and your employees are back in the office make sure that's posted w
th all your other required posters hey we're almost at the end this is the last one so this is 20 20 - 36 so this was issued in April 3rd 2020 so almost six weeks ago but really what it does is this is the executive order that provides protections for employees who are sent home because they are experiencing symptoms of kovat 19 or actually have it and so if you're at risk of infecting others you have to stay home and it says you can't discharge discipline or otherwise retaliate against somebody because they have to stay home with code 19 and what they have pointed out in this order the principle symptoms would be the fever which is a hundred point four in a typical cough or an atypical shortness of breath the order went into effect immediately and it has not been rescinded nor has it been replaced so this is still a mandate from the governor I'm going to suggest to you that the guidance that was put forward in 2020 - 36 is inconsistent with the CDC guidance so I would suggest to you that you follow the CDC guidance regarding bringing employees back because that's what she has referenced in her most recent executive order so you're looking at the three days or the ten days so I would look to the CDC guidance as to when you can bring an employee back again the 14 days have passed its close contact part of the 2020 36 it doesn't apply to health care professionals so that's really not something that I think is applicable to to this group but certainly there are some carve outs in the executive order and so just be aware that you can't discharge discipline or otherwise retaliate against an employee who's staying home so again when we talked about bringing employees back to work and they're refusing if they have kovat or symptoms then they might fall under this executive order but the I'm afraid of getting it or I'm getting more in unemployment are not things that fall under 20 20 - 36 that would prevent you from discipline discharging or well you're not gonna retaliate if you ask them for documentation and they refuse understand that they're protected you can't discipline somebody just because they don't provide the requested documentation if the person doesn't have any leave then it would be unpaid so I know this were some other questions oops sorry about that yes you can take an employee's temperature I would suggest that you have one of those non-contact ones that's allowed understand though that under the a da that would generally not be an allowable that would be considered a medical test but as I had said earlier they've kind of relaxed their standards so you can take an employee's temperature you can require them to be tested for covin 19 but again remember that's just a snapshot in time of what they are positive or negative at that moment so you can and you must have to ask about Kovan 19 symptoms that's part of that daily self check remember that if you're requiring testing during work hours they have to be compensated for the time spent testing and always remember issues regarding confidentiality confidentiality of medical information which we had touched them earlier that is all that I had I appreciate your time I have a couple questions that come in I'm not sure I got two yes you can require employees to take a temperature test how should we address a symptomatic employee or refuses to leave I would send them home I would you know it's a disciplinary issue because you can't have them in the workplace if someone at the facility contracts the virus we've talked about that does the SF CRE come into play for employees who have been requested to isolate at home it depends if they can telework or not yes you have to provide masks for employees when is Co mid-nineteen considered a work-related illness I know that goes to the workers comp issue I would say if you're not a healthcare setting that you probably unless you can directly say that the employee is going to have to show that right they contracted it at work and so in the banking industry I'm not sure that that would be something that they could demonstrate in a healthcare setting definitely I think there's that presumption that they would have contracted it at work but again it's going to be on the employee to be able to show that they contracted it at work for it to be a work-related illness yes you can legally refuse to service customers without face coverings but I had referenced that issue that had happened in California where the woman said she couldn't wear a mask into the grocery store because she couldn't tolerate it and it sounds like there might be a lawsuit stemming so just take care if your customers are saying that they can't wear a mask and you refuse service it could lead to some sort of lawsuit they told you this is going to be ripe right right right for litigation security risks with cover customers wearing face coverings the order does allow you to tell them to pull their face mask down and when does a case of kovat 19 potentially become a worker's comp claim when you can demonstrate that it is work-related so I'm not sure if we still have anyone on the line and I don't see Sophie I don't know that there's any questions but I can stay on for a couple more minutes I think that you've covered them all if anyone wants to ask a verbal question or there's still opportunity to type one into the chat [Music] anything else for Bethany lots of great information to take it I'm sorry I know there's a lot to do get ready to come back but I will Stephanie I can share the slides with you and then you can share with everybody that was on the okay there's there's one real quick from Becky back to travel again does the current executive order restriction on non-essential travel mean self quarantine is required I think so okay I really don't think that I I have read the order I have looked I have looked to the Michigan website I do not see anything requiring self quarantine okay and then where does the plan need to be posted so it said your website on an internal network or hard copy I'm so you know maybe you put it on your website I think it's up to you as long as it's posted somewhere so people can get to it that's great all right well thank you very much Bethany you're welcome you're welcome good luck and you know if there's more questions feel free you guys can reach out okay okay thank you have a good holiday thank you no thanks
