The New York City Council has amended the Fair Chance Act (FCA) that prohibits most employers in the “Big Apple” from inquiring into the criminal records of job applicants until after a conditional job offer to expand employment protections. The amendments became law on January 10, 2021, and take effect on July 29, 2021.
The New York City Council revised the FCA – which was enacted in 2015 to prohibit discrimination based on arrest records or criminal convictions – to identify the specific circumstances upon which an employer can withdraw a conditional offer of employment. An employer can only revoke an offer based on one of three factors:
In December 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported there were 5,333 fatal work injuries recorded in the United States in 2019 using data from the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), a 2 percent increase from the 5,250 in 2018 and the largest annual number since 2007, according to a BLS news release.
The CFOI found the fatal work injury rate was 3.5 fatalities per 100,000 full-time equivalent (FTE) workers, the same rate reported in 2018. Work-related deaths have steadily increased over the last five years, and 2019 was the deadliest year since 2007 for deaths on the job. A worker died every 99 minutes from a work-related injury.