When Do Companies Not Need Labor Law Posters?
Image by David Mark from Pixabay
Each business in the U.S. must comply with the State and Federal Labor Laws. However, it is not enough that each business owner knows the Labor Laws and complies with them, they are also required to display them on the premises in the form of posters.
Role of Labor Posters
Labor law posters have several purposes. Employees have a right to know the laws around their employment, including their rights and responsibilities, and this is their first purpose. The posters also help improve productivity in the workplace. Employees can use the posters as guidance when they need to address violations of their employment rights.
Business owners are often confused about where to download labor law posters from because these are from more than one agency. Agencies tend to be very clear about the exact posters a particular type of business will need to download from their website, but won’t mention that there are additional requirements from another agency.
Businesses and Labor Law Compliance
Failure to comply with the requirements can lead to steep fines, and these can escalate after the first offense. The fines range from $110 to $35,000, depending on the agency and type of poster not displayed.
The best way for any business to stay compliant is to find out which posters are relevant for their business and to display these in the most suitable places. Several companies specialize in labor law compliances. They do the research and make the copies available for business owners to download the relevant labor law posters for their business.
Businesses Exempt from Displaying Labor Law Posters
The law requires that any business with even one employee must display Labor Law posters from the relevant Federal, State, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) agencies.
Businesses that don’t need to display Labor Law posters are:
- Sole proprietorships without any employees.
- Businesses with contract employees.
- Organizations with volunteer workers.
- Family-owned businesses where all employees are related.
Keeping Posters Updated and Protected
From one year to the next, new labor laws are enacted. This requires labor posters to be replaced with updated ones to reflect these changes. An onsite inspection of the premises must show that the employer and employees are aware of the general employment practices with the updated posters on display.
Regulations from the various agencies also demand that the official government notices are protected from theft, defacement, or alterations. Business owners protect the posters by placing them behind glass enclosures or with laminates.
Accessibility of the posters
Posters must be physically displayed in all areas of a business that are frequented by employees regularly. This can be on a designated bulletin board in the break room, lounge, or cafeteria. Displaying them above time clocks also ensures they are visible to everyone.
If a business is scattered over more than one floor or at various locations, it is required to display the employment law notices where all employees can always see them. Therefore, if the employees in a multi-story company have one cafeteria on one floor, then it is fine to display the posters there only. However, if there is more than one communal area, they must be displayed in each one.
Remote workers and posters
The law requires all workers to know their rights, no matter where they work from. If the business hires remote workers that do visit the business premises regularly, displaying the posters at the business covers the obligations of the employer.
However, if a remote worker does not visit the premises, a copy of the labor poster can be given to them to keep at their home, or an electronic labor law poster can be posted on the company intranet allowing the employee to access it whenever they need to.
Staying up to date with labor posters
Keeping posters updated is essential, but this does not mean they need to all be changed yearly. Additionally, some agencies only issue posters a while after the effective dates of the new laws come into place.
Minimum wages change annually, and these posters need frequent updating. Other labor rulings do not change frequently, and some hardly ever. That means there is no need for a business to renew all labor posters every year, just the updated ones.
By law, just about every business needs to display labor law posters in the workplace and these are now easier to attain than ever before.