Which Labor Law Posters Do I Need in My Child Care Facility?

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Running a child care facility like a daycare, a preschool, or a special therapeutic facility for children, takes a lot of work and planning. Once you’ve grown enough that you need to hire employees, there are more things you have to consider behind the scenes. One of those is the legal compliance of your workplace.

The United States Department of Labor requires that every workplace with at least one employee display labor law posters. These posters must be in a visible place where your employees frequent. If your child care business operates out of client’s homes, you will need to ensure that your employees check in at a central location at least once a day that includes these labor law posters, or give each employee their own copy.

Required Posters

There are three different types of labor law posters that you are required to display in your child care facility: state, federal, and federal contractors.

Each state requires different labor law posters that include the Occupational Heath and Safety Act poster.

The federal government requires these labor law posters at child care facilities:

  • Family Medical and Leave Act: employees’ rights to job retention during times of serious illness or pregnancy
  • Employee Polygraph Protection Act: employees’ right to choose to decline a polygraph at any time
  • Federal Minimum Wage
  • Equal Employment Opportunity: informs employees that hiring and firing is done solely on the basis of job-related criteria
  • Job Safety and Health: employers responsibility to provide a safe workplace
  • Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act: military personnel’s right to be employed even during deployment or drills
  • Fair Labor Standards Act for Childcare and Preschools: specifically discusses the federal wage and child labor laws for employees in the child care field

Federal contractors, such as facilities that are paid by the government to provide daycare to federal employees, have special posters that they must display, including information on the NLRA, the Walsh-Healy Public Contracts Act, the Right to Work, and the eVerify system.

Non-compliance

You may be wondering what the big deal is, considering that your employees never look at these posters. The law states that you must display the most up-to-date labor law posters in a visible place, in the sizes required by state and federal law. If you are ever discovered to be disobeying this law, you could face severe fines, even as much as $25,000. Additionally, if you are ever taken to court by a disgruntled employee or through a worker’s compensation claim, you will have to prove that you took all the necessary steps to inform your employee of the labor laws that protect their position in your childcare facility. This may mean that you need to post these displays in multiple languages, to ensure that your employees are given as much access as necessary to the information they need.

Once you have these labor law posters displayed properly, you can focus on running your daycare or preschool without worrying about the legalities.

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