Nevada’s “Right to Return” legislation was approved in the last week of the state legislative session, with the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee quickly passing the amended bill.
As reported by the Nevada Independent, bill sponsor and Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro praised the Culinary Union, the Nevada Resort Association and the governor’s office for a job well done.
“The bill requires employers who declined to call back a former employee because that former worker lacked qualifications—and instead hired someone else for the job—to provide the person they passed over with a written notice and reasoning for the decision within 30 days of making it. The amendment limits the callback requirement, covering employees only if they accept or decline the job offer within 24 hours (revised down from 10 days in the initial bill) and are available within five days of receiving an offer.”
Employers are also cleared of their obligations to re-hire someone if their job offers are turned down three times over a period of at least six weeks, if mail or email is returned as undeliverable or a phone line is out of service.
Excluded from the provisions are managers and stage performers, as well as operators with 15 or fewer slot machines.
Critics of the bill are concerned that in practice, there’s strong potential for former employees to sue their employers, to which Cannizzaro responded, “I think we’ve heard a lot of those concerns. We’ve tried to make sure that the bill still allows for enforcement while not opening up the doors of litigation.”
