The government has rolled out a series of measures to relieve the economic impact brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Introduced under the second round Anti-epidemic Fund, the Employment Support Scheme (ESS) has come under the spotlight as it aims to provide wage subsidies to employers against their undertaking to spend all subsidies on paying wages to their employees and not to implement redundancy during the subsidy period ...
Effective Tuesday, May 19, 2020, the Department of Labor issued a new rule to provide greater simplicity and flexibility to retail and service-industry employers. The rule relaxes the regulatory framework underpinning Section 7(i) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, also known as the “retail service exemption ...
On 18 May 2020, the UAE government announced the following timings with effect from today, 20 May 2020: the National Disinfection Programme will take place between 08:00pm (not 10:00pm) to 06:00am the following day. working hours of butchers, mills and cafes will be from 06:00am to 08:00pm. commercial centres and malls will be open from 09:00am to 07:00pm (with new opening hours to be announced after the upcoming Eid ...
Setting natural gas prices, directly or indirectly, is already a tradition in Romania and 2020 is not an exception to the rule ...
The National Privacy Commission (NPC) has issued guidelines on data protection in work from home (WFH) arrangements (NPC PHE Bulletin No. 12 on “Protecting Personal Data in a Work from Home Arrangement; issued May 15, 2020). The full text of the guidelines can be found here: https://www.privacy.gov.ph/2020/05/npc-phe-bulletin-no-12-protecting-personal-data-in-a-work-from-home-arrangement/ ...
Philippine government agencies continue to issue additional and more specific guidelines on dealing with business continuity concerns, in light of more enterprises being able to resume operations under the Modified Enhanced Community Quarantine (MECQ), and more areas now being under the less restrictive General Community Quarantine (GCQ). This briefing covers the following more recent advisories: Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Labor Advisory No ...
COVID-19 Although the first big wave of requests for repayment deferrals of banking and non-banking loans may seem to be over, a further one is likely just to come once some debtors realise the actual effects of COVID-19 crisis on their economic situation and the pandemic time frame for filing the requests for repayment deferrals will start approaching its end ...
At QIL + 4, prevention is key and our clients’ and team’s health the most important thing. Under the new measures implemented by the Guatemalan Government, we have analyzed the legal alternatives available for signing commercial and civil agreements virtually ...
On May 18, 2020, Governor Gretchen Whitmer signed Executive Order 2020-91 (“Order”) into effect, which details the requirements on employers reopening for business in Michigan. The Order reaffirms and builds upon previous directives for employers permitted to reopen business ...
Dykema’s Labor & Employment Practice Group created a Q&A overview addressing best practices for employers to consider when businesses return to work. The document discusses frequently asked questions concerning employer recalls, pay and benefits, medical documentation, personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements, and more ...
The Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) issued a circular on 27 March 2020 reminding the industry of the importance of compliance with the suitability obligation. Deacons’ client alert, which you can access here provides a succinct summary of the sources of the suitability obligation and the SFC’s FAQs on the subject. The alert also drew attention to the sampling and monitoring obligations under FAQ 10, which are frequently overlooked ...
In a recent enforcement action, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) issued a public reprimand and a HK$19.6 million fine to a licensed corporation (LC) for a range of breaches and internal control shortcomings, including failures relating to: 1. AML 2. Authorisation for transactions 3. Record keeping 4. Handling of client complaints 5. Telephone recording 6. Margin lending 7 ...
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many people have been forced to work from home and this has created new opportunities and very fertile ground for the emergence of cyber threats. Accordingly, on 29 April 2020, the Intermediaries Supervision Department of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) issued a circular (Circular) containing examples of controls and procedures firms can put in place to manage their cybersecurity risks ...
The Vietnam Competition and Consumer Authority has released several documents related to the merger notification regime that was effectively implemented on 15 May 2020, the effective date of Decree 35. As the National Competition Committee has not yet been appointed, the documents clarify that, in accordance with its responsibility under Article 7 ...
This morning FERC issued an order approving in part and rejecting in part the CAISO’s tariff filing creating a new Off-Peak Deliverability Status (“OPDS”) for interconnection customers. The proposal was driven in part by the California Public Utilities Commission’s new methodology for calculating the qualifying capacity of solar and wind resources and the shift in peak demand to a period later in the day when less solar is available ...
The order described below is a follow-up to the order establishing the strategy for the reopening and return to social, educational, and economic activities, including additional industries to those considered essential, published on May 14, 2020 (the “Order”). (Our alert on the Order can be found here ...
With the recent significant decline in commodity prices, and physical transportation and storage curtailments, due in large part to reduced demand related to the COVID-19 pandemic, producers are evaluating many of their producing oil and gas wells to determine whether some level of reduced production is appropriate ...
Is Coronavirus the Great Leveller? When the novel coronavirus first started spreading like wildfire, people called it the “great leveller”. No respecter of status or economic background, Covid-19 affected people at all strata, from housemaids to Hollywood royalty; peons to prime ministers. Tom Hanks, Boris Johnson and an aide to US Vice President Mike Pence all contracted it ...
This seventh edition of Unprecedented, our weekly update on COVID-19-related litigation, sees a continuation of the trend we identified last week: shutdown challenges, workers' compensation claims, and wrongful death lawsuits have dominated the past week’s news cycle. We expect these latter two types of cases, which we consider more broadly as COVID-19 exposure cases, to pick up significantly as the country reopens over the next several weeks ...
The USCIS on Friday, May 15, sent a request to Congress for $1.2 billion in emergency funding, proposing to pay it back with a 10% surcharge on application filing fees. The immigration service is entirely funded by these filing fees and has seen a significant drop in applications due to the coronavirus pandemic. It said in the statement it expects a 61% drop in revenue through the end of the fiscal year ...
In accordance with the publications by the Ministry of Health on May 14 and 15, 2020, the morning of Monday 18, the technical guidelines for health safety in the workplace were published so that micro, small and medium-sized companies can restart activities without compromising the health of its employees ...
This briefing takes a deeper dive into the labor and employment aspect of COVID-19 issuances. Some of the guidelines here are covered in our The Return-to-Work-Checklist for Philippine Companies. A. Operating establishments have been directed to comply with public health standards prescribed by the Department of Health (DOH), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) 1. The DTI issued DTI Memorandum Circular No ...
