|
Upcoming System Maintenance: Civil Rights & Labor (CRL) Software
The Ohio Department Of Transportation has scheduled system maintenance for Civil Rights and Labor(CRL) for upgrading to the version 3.01. During the system maintenance, CRL will not be accessible. The upgrade to CRL version 3.01 will include :
• Performance Improvements: Enhanced responsiveness for faster performance
• Multiple Payrolls: Ability to import multiple payroll files
• Proxy Payrolls: Ability for Prime Contractor to submit payrolls on behalf of a Subcontractor
• Minor user interface changes
DATE / TIME : September 14, 2017 11:45 AM - September 18, 2017 8:00 AM
NOTIFICATION : A follow-up notification will be sent at the completion of the system maintenance.
CONTACT: Please contact [email protected] regarding any questions of the upgrade.
Join The State of Ohio Materials Marketplace
The Ohio Materials Marketplace (OMM) is a free online platform allowing businesses and organizations to connect and find reuse and recycling solutions for waste and by-product materials. Through OMM’s interactive system, Ohio businesses, not-for-profits and government organizations communicate with other members to advertise and acquire materials that might otherwise be destined for disposal in landfills, and one company’s “waste” becomes another’s raw material!
OMM members can save or make money by finding a market for their unwanted materials and avoiding disposal costs. Buyers save money by accessing discounted (or free) materials from “sellers”, and Ohio’s environment benefits by having more material removed from the waste stream and kept out of landfills. Since launching the marketplace in April, we have had 270 organizations join, 4 transactions completed, and more than 7.1 tons of material re-used or recycled. To join the marketplace, please fill out the web form located at https://ohio.materialsmarketplace.org/join.
Who uses the marketplace?
• Recycling Processors
• Manufacturing Plant Operators
• Chemical Engineers
• Small Business Owners
• Construction Managers
• Artists • Material Buyers
• Sustainability Managers
Examples of materials currently listed:
• Wood Pallets/By-Products
• Cured Rubber
• Plastic Drums
• Food Scraps
• Agricultural Lime
• Chemical Co-Products
• Alumina Oxide
• Tire Shreds
Be a leader in Ohio’s emerging circular economy and achieve your zero waste goals. Watch the webinar at https://youtu.be/d_dSHFUn0u0, then go to https://ohio.materialsmarketplace.org/to join today. For specific questions, please contact Joseph Klatt at [email protected]or (614) 644-2798.
Construction Multiemployer Pension Plans Doing Well
Plans at risk of insolvency tend to get the most press but multiemployer pension plans in the construction industry are doing quite well. Thirty unionized construction pension plans are in “critical and declining” status, meaning they're in danger of failure within 15 years, according to a recent Cheiron Inc. report focusing on multiemployer plans at risk of insolvency. But that's out of 788 such plans.
Unionized construction plans account for 57 percent of all multiemployer plans and overall are in a better position than plans in other industries, Cary Franklin, an actuary and managing consultant in the Los Angeles office of Horizon Actuarial Services LLC, recently stated. Plans in construction and in industries other than transportation and manufacturing, are generally in decent shape. Among nearly 1,400 multiemployer pension plans in all industries, Cheiron counted 114 in critical and declining status.
Those plans typically get the most headlines, but the majority of plans are expected to be able to pay out benefits to their participants. The Teamsters’ nearly 400,000-member Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund, in the trucking industry, is probably the most well-known plan headed for failure. Absent some sort of rescue, it's expected to be insolvent by 2025. By comparison, there are fewer than 29,000 participants total in all 30 of the at-risk construction plans.
Horizon and the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans also examined construction multiemployer plans in a report released earlier this year, and found that about 96 percent are expected to remain solvent. “That's a glass that's 96 percent full,” Franklin said. A study from Segal Consulting also points to the general health of construction plans. Such plans have a median funding level of 89 percent and a ratio of inactive to active participants of 1.6-to-1, the consulting group found. Click here to read more.
Administration Scraps Local-Hiring Plan for Public Works
The Trump administration is abandoning another Obama-era regulatory initiative, killing a plan to allow cities to set aside work for local residents on federally funded public works projects. The provision, proposed in 2015, has been winding its way through the approvals process since then but never took effect. No reason was given for the Transportation Department’s withdrawal of the plan, set to take effect on Friday.
The fate of a related pilot program, which gave case-by-case approval for local hiring provisions on selected transportation and construction projects, is now in doubt. The experiment began soon after the rule was proposed and was intended to test the economic effects of preferential employment for projects backed by the federal highway and transit administrations. Researchers hoped to learn whether local-hiring targets could be achieved without reducing competition or raising prices and putting qualified workers from outside the area at an undue disadvantage.
The program was tested in states like New York, California, Texas, Illinois and Pennsylvania and involved viaduct construction, pavement rehabilitation and highway development projects. The study was extended for five years in January, just before President Trump took office. A Transportation Department spokesman told The New York Times this month that “the prior administration’s proposed rule and proposed long-term extensions of pilot programs is under review.” Preferential hiring on public projects has been repeatedly stymied.
Some federal agencies argue that the practice makes bidding for contracts unfair. Tennessee and Ohio have tried to ban it outright, while the Supreme Court has said it is unconstitutional for employers in one state to discriminate against residents from another. Critics say moving local workers to the front of the line can break up construction crews, pile extra costs on out-of-state businesses and even pose a safety risk in areas without enough experts capable of operating specialized machinery or performing dangerous tasks. “This all sounds very good, hiring locally where projects are being built, but when you dig down deeper, there are a lot of unintended consequences,” said Nick Goldstein, vice president for environmental and regulatory affairs at the American Road & Transportation Builders Association. “The problems with this program outweigh the benefits.”
Compliance Date For Cranes Standard ToBe Extended
In an increasingly familiar scenario, OSHA is considering pushing a regulatory compliance date forward into the future in order to “address stakeholder concerns.” On August 31, OSHA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to extend the employer's responsibility to ensure crane operator competency and enforcement for crane operator certification to Nov. 10, 2018.
OSHA issued a final rule in September 2014, extending the deadline by three years for crane operator certification requirements in the Cranes and Derricks in Construction standard. The final rule also extended by three years the employer's responsibility to ensure that crane operators are competent to operate a crane safely.
Stakeholders objected
OSHA’s position that an operator is qualified to operator a crane if he is certified for the type and capacity of equipment or for higher-capacity equipment of that type proved to be controversial; many employers, unions, and firms that offer crane operator training and certification objected to crane capacity being used as a factor for operator certification. Subsequent stakeholder meetings led to the original compliance date extension, to November 10, 2017.
How to comment
Comments may submitted electronically at http://www.regulations.gov, the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal or by facsimile or mail. See the Federal Register notice for submission details and additional information about this proposed rule. Comments must be submitted by Sept. 29, 2017.
If you have any questions about the extension or submitting comments to OSHA, please contact Mark Potnick in the OCA office.
2018 OCA Convention in Kaua’i, Hawaii
The invitations to the OCA convention in Kaua’i have been mailed. If you have not received the invitation but would like to have an electronic version, please contact Rachel Sirca or Emily Pickens at OCA and we will be happy to send you the invitation via e-mail. [email protected]; [email protected].
|