On 21 January 2025, the Department of Labor and Employment issued Department Order No. 248, series of 2025 or the “New Rules and Regulations on the Employment of Foreign Nationals in the Philippines” (“New Rules”), which provides for the rules regulating the employment of foreign nationals in the Philippines.
The New Rules shall take effect fifteen (15) days after its publication in the Official Gazette or newspaper of general circulation. As of the date of this writing, the New Rules has not been published in the Official Gazette or any newspaper of general circulation.
On January 16, 2025, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission replaced the 2016 Antitrust Guidance for Human Resource Professionals. The new guidelines now titled, Antitrust Guidelines for Business Activities Affecting Workers, reaffirm the major points of the 2016 guidelines. Wage-fixing and no poach agreements remain illegal and sharing wage information may violate the antitrust laws. However, the new guidelines identify a slew of other agreements and practices that can violate antitrust laws, including franchisee agreements with employment restraints, non-compete clauses, overly broad non-disclosure agreements, and other employment restraints.
Belgium’s new Private Investigation Act (PIA) was published in the Official Gazette on 6 December 2024, with most of its provisions having entered into force on 16 December 2024. The PIA replaces the 1991 Belgian Act on Private Detectives with the aim of modernizing the applicable legal framework in light of new investigation methods and the application of the General Data Protection Regulation. With its broader scope of application â this legislation is now also applicable to internal investigations â and the significant additional requirements it imposes, the PIA will undoubtedly impact many businesses operating in Belgium.
Starting 1 January 2025, only citizens of Georgia and Armenia will be eligible for residence permits for the purpose of employment and guest worker residence permits. This marks a significant tightening of the previous rules, which allowed citizens of 10 countries to obtain guest worker residence permits and had no such restrictions for residence permits for the purpose of employment. Although these changes do not affect currently valid permits, the new rules will apply to all new permit issuances.
In an article published in Compliance & Risk Journal, Kim Sartin, Lauren French and Melissa Chan discuss the new duty on employers to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment of their workers in the course of their employment that came into force on 26 October 2024.
US employers can expect material changes to employment laws under the Trump administration, with impacts felt across their business operations. President-elect Trump’s first term, his campaign platform, and the typical shifts in a Democratic to Republican transition provide clues about what’s to come: federal agencies, policies and rules will become more business-centered and many of the Biden-era worker-focused protections will be rolled back.
Further to the Employment Rights Bill that was published on 10 October 2024, the government has launched a consultation on strengthening statutory sick pay. The consultation seeks views on the amount of statutory sick pay that employees earning less than the current eligibility threshold should receive as part of the amendments to the Employment Rights Bill.
In brief The Employment Rights Bill (ERB) introduces a new requirement for employers to prevent third party harassment…
On 13 September 2024, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress announced its “Decision on Implementing the Gradual Extension of the Statutory Retirement Age”. On the same date, the State Council issued its “Measures on the Gradual Extension of the Statutory Retirement Age”, which go into more detail on how the new retirement policy will be implemented.
The Dutch government and the Dutch tax authorities recently outlined their approach to enforcing rules against false self-employment, with significant changes set to take effect on 1 January 2025. This news alert highlights the criteria under which the current rules will be enforced, the motions adopted to ensure a smoother transition to the new enforcement regime, and the key takeaways for organizations.