UPDATED

The Connecticut General Assembly ended its regular session last night. As far as new laws affecting employers, the session certainly ends with a whimper. 

For many employers, the big news is that the paid sick leave bill once again failed.  This time it wasn’t even put up for a vote in either chamber of the General Assembly. 

So, what are some bills that have passed over the last few days?  Well, two that come to mind are two bills affecting public employers.

• H.B. 5202 requires (instead of allows) the Department of Administrative Services to develop guidelines for telecommuting guidelines for employees. This will affect state workers only. The guidelines must be designed to achieve the following: (1) increase worker efficiency and productivity, (2) benefit the environment, and (3) reduce traffic congestion.  The bill moves on to the Governor for her signature.
• H.B. 5207 — which I’ve discussed at length previously — was also passed by the General Assembly. That bill restricts the use of background checks for prospective state employees until after job offers have been made.  This bill also moves to the Governor for signature.

And frankly, that’s about it. There’s just not that much of relevance to private employers.

There are some more revisions to the misclassification of workers provisions and to some workers compensation provisions. But other than that, this will go down as one of the quietest years for private employers in quite some time.

UPDATE: As I have pointed out before, though, there were other bills previously passed or considered. One of them also covers leave time for employees that are family abuse victims. The bill H.B. 5497 will be discussed in a later post.