Newsletter July, 2020

US legislations on employers’ liability protection clauses in case of Covid-19 could become a federal issue

If this regulation is adopted, employers’ liability would be limited to acts of gross negligence or intentional misconduct.
The law would have retroactive effect from 2019 and be in force until 2024.

France: temperature checks before entering the workplace are not permitted

Health checks with data collection are prohibited
Health checks with no additional collection of data are allowed, but the employee can refuse them

Legislations in Chile, Colombia and Uruguay aligned to recognised Covid-19 as an occupational disease for the health sector.

The new legislation defines legal strike as opposed to illegal strike, and sets the conditions for legality.
It also distinguishes between essential services and services of transcendental importance and many other important specificities.

Social partners requested the government to extend the short-term working allowance scheme until the end of 2020.
They also suggested that businesses paying the wage differences between short-term and normal wages should be provided more incentives and exemption of income tax

On 4^th May 2020, the Sri Lankan social partners and the Ministry of Skills Development, Employment and Labour Relations reached a tripartite agreement for “Pro-rate Wages Based on Varied Levels of Deployment”.
This agreement paves the way to further discuss and solidify schemes such as ‘job sharing’.

The OECD Employment Outlook 2020 focuses on Worker security and Covid-19 crisis.
Chapter 1 provides valuable insights and data on the impact of Covid-19 on the labour market and the policy responses in OECD countries.
The following chapters furnish information on the access to unemployment benefits, a comparative review of employment protection legislation (EPL) across OECD countries, the situation of middle-skilled workers, and the consequences of the pandemic on vocational education and training graduates.