Audit, Compliance and Risk Blog

As governments worldwide consider expanding requirements to manage greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and moderate climate change, private sector groups are mobilizing to craft voluntary reporting and management activities – which might shape or even avoid future governmental mandates. In May, the 32 international business leaders on the Financial Stability Board’s (FSB’s) Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure issued recommendations for climate-related financial disclosures by public companies worldwide. The Task Force reported these recommendations to the Group of 20 (G-20) leaders at last month’s meeting in Hamburg – the G-20 finance ministers and central bankers had asked FSB in 2015 to commission the Task Force.

Read More

Since 2012, California has administered a “cap-and-trade” program, setting total greenhouse gas (GHG) emission limits from selected major emitting sectors and creating tradeable emission permits and offsets to provide flexibility and encourage innovation. The program was created under authority of the state’s 2006 “AB 32” legislation, which focuses on reducing statewide GHG emissions by 2020. This authority would have expired in 2020, but new legislation extends the program until 2030. In order to secure enough votes for the extension, legislative leaders and Governor Brown agreed to statutory changes in this program and related air quality programs.

Read More

By Ryan J. Black, Janine MacNeil, Sharon E. Groom, Lyndsay A. Wasser, Rohan Hill

Read More

By Kate Dearden

On May 30, 2017, the Ontario government announced its intention to introduce The Fair Workplaces, Better Jobs Act, 2017. This legislation would include significant amendments to the Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) and the Labour Relations Act, 1995 (LRA).

Read More

One of California’s many unique environmental, health and safety (EH&S) laws is its “Corporate Criminal Liability Act (CCLA).” CCLA provides greatly expanded potential personal criminal liabilities for violations by managers, so is often referred to as the “Be a Manager, Go to Jail” law. Enacted in 1990, CCLA draws both from occupational safety and product liability laws, to provide sweeping requirements for corporations and managers to abate or warn exposed individuals (including employees) about a broad variety of serious concealed dangers occurring in a broad variety of circumstances, including both workplaces and products. Although this law has been used by prosecutors and advocates to strike fear into the hearts of corporate managers, there have been few reported cases in its nearly three decades on the books.

Read More

On June 27, 2017 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) jointly proposed to revise their regulatory definitions of “waters of the United States”, applying authority under the Clean Water Act (CWA). Their proposals would rescind expansive versions adopted in June 2015, during the Obama Administration, and reinstate the text of the definitions in place until 2015. These actions represent the latest chapter in a saga dating back to United States Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 overturning decades-long understandings of which waters CWA empowers the agencies to regulate. (I wrote about this history in a blog about the 2015 rules here).

Read More

On May 23, the Trump Administration issued its budget proposal for federal Fiscal Year (FY) 2018 (October 1, 2017 through September 30, 2018), subtitled “A New Foundation for America’s Greatness”. The proposal includes a 31% cut in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget, from $8.2 billion in FY 2016 (stable in FY 2017 under a Continuing Budget Resolution rather than a fully-new federal budget), to $5.7 billion for FY 2018, with corresponding personnel cuts from 15,376 full-time-equivalent employees (FTE) to 11,611. Although presidents’ annual budget proposals are rarely enacted in full, they do mark the formal start of annual considerations of federal policies and staffing. It’s therefore useful to review how President Trump and EPA Administrator Pruitt hope to proceed.

Read More

Workplace violence prevention is increasingly recognized as one of many employer responsibilities for the safety and health of their employees. Different jurisdictions have focused on different types and degrees of “violence” – from deadly attacks to workplace rudeness and bullying. California has been a leader among U.S. jurisdictions. The state requires private employers with more than 50 employees, and all public employers, to train managers and supervisors at least every two years in how to avoid and prevent sexual harassment. Since 2015, this training must include “abusive conduct.”

Last year, the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) adopted a requirement that employers with five or more employees create detailed written policies for preventing harassment, discrimination, and retaliation. This month, DFEH issued detailed guidance addressing these anti-harassment requirements. These new guidelines should be required reading for California employers, and non-California employers should take the opportunity to compare their own efforts against these recommended best practices.

What Are California’s Harassment Prevention Requirements?

Effective April 1, 2016, DFEH regulations require California employers with five or more employees to create detailed written policies for preventing harassment, discrimination, and retaliation. DFEH claims finds authority for this requirement in the state Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) prohibitions against discrimination, harassment and retaliation, and in FEHA’s requirement that employers “take reasonable
steps to prevent and correct wrongful (harassing, discriminatory, retaliatory) behavior in the workplace.”

Anti-harassment policies must do all of the following:

Read More

May was Better Hearing and Speech Month, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH reminded employers that Occupational hearing loss (OHL) is one of the most common work-related illnesses in the United States. Each year, about 22 million U.S. workers are exposed to hazardous noise levels at work. NIOSH reports that U.S. employers paid more than $1.5 million in penalties for not protecting workers from noise in 2016, and that $242 million is spent annually on workers' compensation for hearing loss disability.

Read More

On June 1, President Trump announced that the United States will withdraw from the Paris Accord on climate change, and then seek to “begin negotiations to reenter either the Paris Accord or a really entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the United States, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers.” Most of the strong reactions I’ve seen – pro and con – express only superficial approaches to the implications of the decision. In this note I’ll dig a little deeper, and propose two different less-superficial ways to watch these implications play out.

Read More