Labor Law Updates

When it comes to labor law posting compliance, many employers mistakenly overlook bilingual labor law posters. Or they assume foreign language requirements don’t impact their business because their entire workforce speaks English (or only a few employees speak another language, such as Spanish).

As 2025 unfolds, employers must stay ahead of evolving employment laws to ensure compliance and protect their workforce. Here are five key trends shaping the employment law landscape this year, along with insights on what they mean for businesses.

With all the labor law issues you must navigate as an employer, you may wonder if workplace poster compliance is that big a deal. Who’s even checking if you’re displaying these postings?

Whether you have two employees, 200 or 200,000, one federal requirement is perfectly clear: You must — absolutely must — display labor law posters in the workplace.  Failure to comply could lead to costly fines, which could severely impact the ongoing viability of smaller businesses.

On November 15, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas vacated the Department of Labor’s (DOL) final rule raising the salary thresholds for being exempt from overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The ruling applies nationwide and means that employers do not need to increase employee salaries in January 2025 to maintain their exempt status. It also vacates the July 1, 2024 increase. The court held that each of the three components of the rule exceeded the DOL’s statutory authority under the FLSA.