Employer Alerts & Employment Law Updates

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) is a federal law that requires employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 day’s advanced written notice of a plant closing or mass layoff.  Advanced warning is intended to give affected employees the opportunity to seek assistance, find alternate jobs or obtain training.  Many states have enacted their own requirements to provide additional protections to employees.  The state requirements are often called state WARN acts or Mini-WARN acts and the requirements are in addition to the federal requirements. 

Effective July 27, 2025, Employers may no longer require a driver’s license as a condition of employment or include such a requirement in job postings, unless a driving is an essential function of the job or driving is related to a legitimate business purpose.

Washington Minimum Wage Act Amended to Prohibit Employer Coercion Based on Immigration Status

Good News for Employees: Expansion of EPOA Protected Classes

On April 25^th, Spokane Mayor, Lisa Brown, signed the Ban the Address ordinance which is reportedly the first in the country to prohibit discrimination against job applicants based upon housing status.  The ordinance expands fair chance hiring requirements and is intended to protect homeless job applicants.  Employers will be generally prohibited from requiring an applicant to provide their address on a job application.  Employers will also be restricted from inquiring more generally into an applicant’s housing status until after a provisional job offer is made. Once a provisional offer of employment is made, an employer may then inquire into an applicant’s address or residence history. 

The Washington State Department of Labor and Industries has released the updated Salary Threshold Implementation Schedule for 2024. The threshold salary requirement for exempt employees is determined through a calculation based upon minimum wage.  For 2024, the salary threshold was pre-set by the Legislature to be twice the minimum wage.  Each time a new schedule is released, it provides the salary thresholds for the upcoming year and estimated thresholds for the remaining years based upon projections of minimum wage.  Since the values for future years are based upon projections that may change, it is important that employers who wish to classify employees as exempt verify the threshold numbers each year.       

Effective January 1, 2024, Washington’s minimum wage for non-exempt employees 16 years and older will increase to $16.28 per hour.  State law allows workers aged 14-15 to be paid 85% of the minimum wage.  Accordingly, the minimum wage for workers aged 14-15 will increase to $13.84.  The federal minimum wage remains unchanged at $7.25 per hour for 2024. 

The Washington State minimum wage will see a steep increase in 2023 due to the 8.6% rate of inflation. https://www.lni.wa.gov/news-events/article/22-026