Notice of Filing: Where a Posting Goes and for How Long

Notice is a precondition to a valid filing, not a courtesy. The rule has three branches: a bargaining representative receives it where one exists, a hard copy posting substitutes where none does, and electronic notification substitutes for the posting. All three run to affected workers, and all three must be documented before anyone asks.

The bargaining representative comes first

Where there is a bargaining representative for the occupational classification in which the sponsored worker will be employed, the employer provides notice to that representative. It is given on or within thirty days before the date the application is filed, and the file keeps the transmittal.

The obligation is discharged by delivery to the representative, not by posting. An employer with represented workers in the classification that posts instead has not satisfied the attestation, however conspicuous the posting was.

The hard copy posting

Where no representative exists, the employer posts notice in at least two conspicuous locations at each place of employment where a sponsored worker will be employed. The posting runs for a total of ten days. Conspicuous means visible to workers in the relevant classification, which the regulation illustrates with locations of the kind used for wage and occupational safety notices.

The posting goes up on or within thirty days before filing. It must go up at every location, including customer sites and locations added later. Placements at sites the employer does not control raise practical difficulties addressed under third-party placement and end-client documentation.

The electronic alternative

An employer may give notice electronically instead of posting, provided the method reaches the affected workers. Acceptable methods include a home page or electronic bulletin board accessible to workers in the classification, direct email to those workers, or publication in an electronic newsletter distributed to them.

The electronic notice runs for the same period as a posting, and the same evidentiary problem applies in reverse. A posted sheet can be photographed; an intranet page has to be captured. Employers using the electronic route should preserve a dated screenshot, the distribution list and the system log showing the period the page was live.

What the notice must say

The text is prescribed in substance. It states that a sponsored worker is sought, the number of workers, the occupational classification, the wage rate offered, the period of employment, the locations at which the worker will be employed, and that the application is available for public inspection at a named address.

It also carries the complaint statement: that complaints alleging misrepresentation in the application or failure to comply with its terms may be filed with the Department of Labor, at the address given. Omitting that sentence is a defect on its face, and it is the omission a reviewer spots first because it is the only fixed text on the page.

The requirement that a disclosure actually reach the audience it is written for is not unique to this program. What counts as a conspicuous location here is the same practical question examined under clear and conspicuous disclosure in practice: a notice nobody in the relevant group could reasonably see has not been given, whatever the file says about where it hung.

Proof, and the copy to the worker

A copy of the notice, showing the dates and the locations where it appeared, goes into the public access file within one working day after the application is filed. A separate obligation runs to the worker: a copy of the certified application is given to the sponsored worker no later than the first day of work.

The proof problem is the whole of the practical difficulty. A dated photograph of each of the two locations, a signed statement from whoever posted it, and a calendar entry for the takedown date will resolve almost any dispute. The absence of all three converts an easy attestation into a contested one, and once a file is open every unproved attestation is examined, as described under how a wage and hour investigation of a sponsor proceeds.

Institutions with many sites usually assign the posting to whoever already handles the other mandatory workplace notices, which is also how the verification form timetable tends to be kept. One owner, one calendar, one folder. That arrangement fails least often, because the failure mode here is never ignorance of the rule; it is a posting that nobody was assigned to take down and photograph.

Sponsors that want the routine tested against their own site map generally ask H-1B compliance counsel to walk a single filing end to end before the next batch goes out. The exercise takes an afternoon and usually finds two things: a site with no posting record at all, and a template notice missing the complaint sentence. Both are trivial to fix before an application is filed and expensive to explain afterward.