More than 150 attended the 9th Annual HR Professionals Conference and the 4th Annual Training & Development Conference, which ran back-to-back with a joint keynote session last month in Scottsdale, Arizona.

On September 21, AGC submitted comments to a July 23, 2010, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. The comments were in response to plans to implement affirmative action and nondiscrimination obligations of contractors and subcontractors, and to evaluate the affirmative action provisions under Section 503 of the Rehabilitation Act.

On October 12, 2010, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that it will defer, for one year, a health care reform law requirement that employers report the cost of coverage on employees' W-2 wage and income statements.  The postponement was made in order to provide employers the time necessary to make changes to payroll systems and procedures in accordance with the new reporting requirement.

[caption id="attachment_1172" align="alignleft" width="150" caption=" "][/caption] With the downturn in the availability of commercial work, many construction contractors are bidding more on federal and federally-assisted work and having to comply with the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts. The application of the Davis-Bacon and Related Acts to all projects funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) has also left many contractors uncertain about the requirements of federal prevailing wage laws and the consequences of non-compliance. AGC is offering two resources to help contractors comply with the requirements of this sometimes complicated law.

In a disappointing but not surprising move, the National Labor Relations Board on August 27 issued a long-awaited decision about the lawfulness of union bannering, finding it to be permissible, protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).

The latest of AGC of America's ongoing efforts to educate federal agencies about the complications inherent in government mandates for project labor agreements (PLAs) includes an October 1 letter to the U.S. Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) and a September 8 letter to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).  As explained in the letters, while AGC neither supports nor opposes PLAs in general, AGC strongly opposes government mandates for PLAs on publicly funded construction projects. AGC is committed to free and open competition in all public construction markets and believes that publicly funded contracts should be awarded without regard to contractors' lawful labor relations policies and practices.  The letters urge the agencies to defer to contractors' judgment as to whether a PLA is appropriate for a given project and to their expertise in negotiating a PLA should they deem one appropriate.

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB or Board) has struck down an applicant referral system for open-shop electrical contractors run by the Greater Houston chapter of the Independent Electrical Contractors association (IEC), finding that it unlawfully discriminated against union "salts."  

On September 26, 2010, The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) began requiring E-Verify-participating employers to compare the photo from U.S. passports presented during the I-9 process with the government's digitally stored photos online.  This new requirement occurred shortly after the one-year anniversary date of the same agency's rule requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to use the E-Verify system to verify their employees' authorization to work in the U.S. 

Collective bargaining settlements reported to the Construction Labor Research Council (CLRC) between January and June of this year resulted in an average first-year wage-and-benefits increase of $0.55 or 1.1 percent.  This is considerably lower than the $1.49 or 3.1 percent average increase reported for the comparable period last year.  The average second-year increase in newly negotiated multi-year agreements is $0.69 or 1.6 percent, and the average third-year increase is $1.01 or 2.2 percent.  These increases are also lower than those negotiated a year earlier, but by a smaller margin, according to CLRC.  As reported earlier in Human Resource & Labor News, wage-and-benefit increases negotiated in 2009 overall were the lowest in 13 years.

AGC's 9th Annual HR Professionals Conference and 4th Annual Training & Development (T&D) Conference will take place October 18-20, 2010, at the Doubletree Paradise Valley Resort in Scottsdale, Ariz.  Training, development and human resource professionals will gather to network and earn valuable continuing education credits toward their respective designations.