Governor Pritzker has signed a bill raising the Illinois minimum wage to $15 per hour by 2025.

As of May 1, 2020, all employers must be compliant in using the newest version of the I-9 form, updated at the beginning of this year. Please throw out any old, unused versions of the form. The latest version can be found on here. Failure to use the newest version of the form can result in penalties from the Illinois Department of Labor.

The Illinois Workplace Transparency Act, effective January 1, 2020, requires all employers provide sexual harassment awareness training to employees annually. In order to meet this requirements, all paid Diocesan, parish, and school staff are required to complete the Virtus Anti-Harassment training by December 31, 2020. This training is for paid staff only.

Instructions for how to complete the Anti-Harassment Training provided by Virtus

Frequently Asked Questions about the Training

For all employees, the training is 7 lessons lasting a total of approximately 40 minutes. For those who are managers or supervisors of staff, the training has an additional 5 lessons making the entire training for managers approximately 70 minutes.

Please note: if you are requiring documentation for an employee file for completed training, the documentation must be printed immediately upon completion of the training before the employee logs out of the Virtus dashboard. Please see the FAQ’s for instructions. Otherwise, a copy of a training completion verification can be obtained by contacting the Office for Human Resources.

Please contact the Office for Human Resources with any questions.

USDOL Link to information

To comply with this requirement effective 1/1/2020 1) review the weekly or annual salaries of all Exempt employees on the payroll at your location, 2) Exempt Employees whose salary is less than the new $$35,568 per year or $684 per week  a) must be moved to an hourly rate of pay and non-exempt status.  The employee will be eligible to earn 1 and ½ their regular hourly rate of pay for any hours worked over 40 in a work week, or b) the employees salary must be raised to meet the new exempt salary level of $684 per week.  To determine the exempt or non-exempt status of employees please refer to the Fair Labor Standards Act  For more information regarding the guidelines for determining exempt status please refer to the following USDOL Fair Labor Standards Act links.  Please note Teachers and school administrators fall under the Professional Exemption regardless of salary.  Teacher aides do not and are considered to be non-exempt and eligible to receive overtime pay if working more than 40 hours in a work week.  CAUTION:  The Administrative Exemption is usually reserved for positions that regularly use discretion and independent judgement and caution should be used in determining that a parish secretary uses discretion and independent judgement as it relates to the Administrative Exemption bur rather are performing clerical duties of a routine nature and making routine decisions.    

• Full Explanation of the Overtime Rule:  https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17g_salary.htm
• Executive Exemption:  https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17b_executive.pdf
• Administrative Exemption:  https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17c_administrative.pdf
• Professional Exemption:  https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17d_professional.pdf
• Computer:  https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17e_computer.pdf
• Outside Sales:  https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17f_outsidesales.pdf

Illinois amended its Equal Pay act to include a ban on salary-history inquiries on applications and in job interviews. The ban takes effect 9/29/2019. Under the law employers may only ask job applicants about compensation expectations for a given role. Penalties for noncompliance could be as high as $10,000 for special damages, civil penalties up to $5,000 for each violation, injunctive relief, and attorney’s fees and costs. The application templates on Office for Human Resources webpage have been amended accordingly effective 8/2019. Please destroy any previous editions of employment applications and begin using the revised applications posted on the diocesan website. Please review any other application documents specific to the parish/school requesting salary history information and revise accordingly.