Labor Laws That Could Be Coming To Your State

by | Dec 5, 2022 | Dental Office, Employer advice, Practice Compliance | 0 comments

Long gone are the simple easy days where you and your employees agree to work together in exchange for pay. Now there are many laws and factors that control how you run your dental practice and how you employ your Dental Hygienist, Assistant and front office personnel.

And it seems every year more laws are put into place. However, over the last 2 years it feels like many new labor laws have come about and many more are on the way.

This post is NOT legal advice. It is simply to give you some idea of the laws that we are seeing going into effect in some states. It is ALWAYS best to work with a HR professional that specializes in YOUR state to know what the laws are and make sure you are staying compliant.

Here are some labor laws that could be coming to your state soon (if they aren’t already).

Pay Scale Transparency

This law is going into effect in California in January 2023 and is already in New York. And I’ve heard Illinois and Oregon will be implementing this soon as well. The bill is aimed directly at increasing transparency from employers to candidates.

Now depending on the state, the “rules” are different. I understand in New York, all job posts are to have pay rates while in CA only employers of over 15 employees are required to “disclose a position’s pay scale in any job posting or advertisement.” (source:CDA).

In addition, employers will be required to “provide to an employee, upon the employee’s request, the pay scale for the position in which the employee is currently employed” (source:CDA) .

Now EVEN if your state would NEVER pass a law like this, you are still going to be effected by it. Since thee states that are passing these laws can fault and fine “any third party used by the employer to announce, post, publish or otherwise advertise a job”(source:CDA). Many job boards like Indeed and Ziprecruiter are adding estimated pay rates to every job post, even if you didn’t include one and it isn’t required in your state.

This “estimated” pay rate, could be more or less than what you are willing to offer your applicants, so it could effect the number of applicants you receive on that job posting. My advice is to always research what is being offered in your area and include a pay rate on your jobs.

Dental Professionals don’t qualify as Independent Contracts

A handful of states have already made this a thing, and the Federal Government has been chatting about making it nationwide.

This stems from California Labor Code section 2750.3, which is concerned with making sure that employees are not classified as independent contractors.

ABC Test – why dental professionals cannot be classified as Independent Contractors.

To be considered an Independent Contractor the person:

“(A) works without control or direction of the hiring entity in connection with performance of the work, both under contract for the performance of the work and in fact;
(B) performs work outside the scope of the hiring entity’s usual business; and
(C) is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hiring entity.” (source:CDA).

Only by meeting all 3 of these criteria can you classify someone working for you as an independent contractor, otherwise they should be considered an employee.

Scope of work for Dental Assistants, Expanded Functions and Hygienists is changing in several states

With the shortage of dental professionals that is occurring nationwide, Dental Associations across the US have been putting pressure on law makers to help alleviate the pain dental employers are feeling. In many states, law makers have responded by increasing the scope of duties that Dental Assistants, Hygienists and Expanded Functions or Advanced Practice license holders can do.

If you haven’t looked into it recently, I highly recommend you look at your State’s Dental Board website to see if any of your employees are now able to take on more work.

If they can, be careful. Don’t just increase their work without increasing their pay, or they might start looking for work elsewhere. Make sure you discuss their new duties, train them properly and then include a raise with these new duties.

Benefits

Several states are now requiring that certain types of benefits must be given to employees. This could be increase paid time off, access to 401k or sick pay is given from day one rather than accrued. Every state is different, but I know a lot of states have are now requiring certain benefits.

Make sure to do your research on this to be compliant.

In Closing

We didn’t get into every type of labor law that is being changes, as there are so many. But I highly recomend you do some research to make sure a law didn’t go into effect that could cause you trouble. We like to recomend working with CedrHR, but there are many amazing services that you can work with to navigate these ever changing laws.

If you need to hire, head over to DirectDental and post your job today!

Smiles, 

Holli Perez
DirectDental

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