Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

On March 6, 2024, President Biden issued an Executive Order designed to increase participation in the U.S. Department of Labor’s Registered Apprenticeship Program (“the Program”). The purpose of the Program is to connect job seekers looking to learn new skills with employers looking for qualified workers. 

On October 30, 2023, President Biden issued a wide-ranging Executive Order to address the development of artificial intelligence (“AI”) in the U.S.  Entitled the Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence, the Order seeks to address both the “myriad benefits” as well as what it calls the “substantial risks” that AI poses to the country. It caps off a busy year for the Executive Branch in the AI space. In February the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission published its Strategic Enforcement Plan highlighting AI ...

Federal contractors can make their own determinations on vaccination exemptions and do not need to terminate employees who refuse vaccination, according to new guidance from the Biden Administration.

On October 11, 2021, Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, issued Executive Order GA-40, which proscribes entities from compelling individuals to receive the COVID-19 vaccine who object “for any reason of personal conscience, based on a religious belief, or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from COVID-19.” Offending entities can be fined up to $1,000 for failing to comply with this order.

President Joe Biden signed a new executive order on July 9, called the Executive Order on Promoting Competition in the American Economy, aimed at cracking down on monopolies in Big Tech, labor and other sectors.  According to a Fact Sheet released by the White House, the Executive Order includes 72 initiatives the President wants over a dozen federal agencies to undertake for the stated purpose of promoting competition throughout the U.S. economy.

If 2017 is any indication, the new year will bring a fresh cascade of changes – both announced and unannounced, anticipated and unanticipated – in the business immigration landscape.  Few, if any, of these changes are expected to be good news for U.S. businesses and the foreign workers they employ.

With an eye towards “increasingly unaffordable” higher education, President Trump signed an Executive Order on June 15, 2017, seeking to “provide more affordable pathways to secure, high paying jobs by promoting apprenticeships and effective workforce development programs, while easing the regulatory burden on such programs and reducing or eliminating taxpayer support for ineffective workforce development programs.” The Executive Order directs the Department of Labor (“DOL”) to propose regulations that “promote the development of apprenticeship programs by third parties,” including trade and industry groups, companies, non-profit organizations, unions, and joint labor-management organizations. The term “apprenticeship” means “an arrangement that includes a paid-work component and an educational or instructional component, wherein an individual obtains workplace-relevant knowledge and skills.”  The Executive Order, in effect, seeks to expand the authority of employers and other third parties to design their own apprenticeship programs and tasks the DOL with implementing or rejecting and assessing such programs on an expedited basis.

President Trump has signed an Executive Order to temporarily restrict the admission of all refugees and persons from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen.  The administration’s failure to provide clear guidance to its own agencies on how to implement the order is resulting in inconsistent applications, which are unacceptable to the hundreds of thousands of individuals and U.S. businesses potentially affected by this travel ban.

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On July 21, President Obama signed an Executive Order adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of protected categories included in Executive Order 11246, originally issued by President Johnson in 1965.  E.O. 11246 now prohibits federal contractors from discriminating against employees or applicants for employment on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity.