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  • The speed and severity of the current crisis means UK employers face very difficult and pressing decisions.
  • Some intermediate steps can be taken to preserve workforces for a period and avoid immediate redundancies.
  • Some form of individual or even collective consultation with employees or their representatives may be necessary. This can be used as an opportunity to seek creative, collaborative solutions to preserve jobs in the short-term.
  • We set out a checklist of potential measures below.

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Continue Reading Five Ways to Avoid Redundancies During The Coronavirus Crisis

Last night (Wednesday, March 18, 2020) the President signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act after it passed the Senate in the afternoon by a vote of 90-8.  The Act requires all private health plans to cover COVID-19 diagnostic testing—coverage that most insured and large self-insured health plans already are providing.  The Act also requires employers with fewer than 500 employees to provide up to ten weeks of paid FMLA leave and two weeks of paid sick leave to employees affected by COVID-19.  For small employers subject to these new leave mandates, the Act provides tax credits to help offset the cost of the mandates.  This means that the tax credits are not available to employers with 500 or more employees, even if they provide paid leave equal to or in excess of that required of smaller employers under the Act.  It is noteworthy that the Senate voted down amendments that would have expanded the bill’s paid FMLA leave or replaced the bill’s paid leave with state unemployment benefits.
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Continue Reading Impact of New Coronavirus Mandatory Leave and Testing Legislation Largely Limited to Smaller Employers

On March 13, 2020, the President declared the COVID-19 pandemic to be an emergency under Section 501(b) of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (the “Stafford Act”).  The decision to declare an emergency is addressed in a letter from the President to Administration officials in which he explained that his decision to issue an emergency declaration was “based on the fact that our entire country is now facing a significant public health emergency.”

Employers may be wondering whether this declaration provides an opportunity to offer “qualified disaster relief payments” under Internal Revenue Code § 139 to employees as a means of mitigating the pandemic’s effects.  It is not entirely clear.  Because the President declared an emergency—not a major disaster—it is not clear, until we get further guidance from the IRS that employers that they may rely on Code § 139 as a means of providing tax-free benefits to their employees.  Section 139 refers specifically to a declared disaster as do the regulations under section 165(i), which are cross-referenced in the section 139 rules.  Less formal IRS guidance in the form of revenue procedures have conflated the two types of declarations in the past, however, and the IRS has indicated that for purposes of section 165(i), “a disaster includes an event declared a major disaster or an emergency.”  However, in the interim, employers may still adopt other policies, such as leave-sharing, that will ease the pandemic’s toll on affected employees.…

Continue Reading COVID-19 Emergency Declaration: Code § 139 Uncertain; Leave-Sharing Policies Permitted

The Internal Revenue Service has issued guidance (Notice 2020-15) that allows sponsors of high deductible health plans (“HDHPs”) to reimburse up to the full cost of medical care services and items for testing and treatment of COVID-19 before plan participants meet the plan’s minimum statutory deductible.  Accordingly, participants in a HDHP that waives…