Effective Jan. 1, 2019, the Illinois Department of Labor will enforce three new state labor laws.

You might want to pay attention because they involve employee reimbursement, equal pay and increased civil penalties for carnival operators who don’t do background checks.

Here’s the lineup of each new law:

Employer Reimbursements for Employee Expenses

• Public Act 100-1094 (SB2999)

This law officially amends the Wage Payment and Collection Act.

It mandates employers reimburse employees “for necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee within the employee’s scope of employment and directly related to services performed for the employer.”

What that’s saying, basically, is that most employers have a reimbursement policy — for mileage or expenses that are directly related to the job. If your employer doesn’t have an official policy, you’re still entitled to reimbursement.

The act mandates an employee submit expenses for reimbursement within 30 days or within parameters of employer reimbursement policy.

Equal Pay

• Public Act 100-1140 (HB4743)

The new law amends the Equal Pay Act of 2003.

It provides that no employer may discriminate between employees by paying wages to an African-American employee at a rate less than the rate at which the employer pays wages to another employee who is not African-American for the same or substantially similar work on a job that requires equal skill, effort, and responsibility and is performed under similar working conditions.

Background Checks For Carnival Operators

• Public Act 100-0944 (SB3240)

This new law has a long-winded title: “Civil Penalties for Carnival and Amusement Enterprise Operators for Failure to Conduct Criminal Background Checks on Employees.”

It amends the Amusement Ride and Attraction Safety Act, increasing the civil penalty for carnival or amusement enterprise operators who employee workers convicted of any offenses set forth in Article II and Article 9 of the Criminal Code of 1961 or the Criminal Code of 2012, is a registered sex offender, or the employer fails to conduct a criminal background check on the employee.

Under the amendment, the first offense civil penalty is raised to $5,000 from $1,000, the second offense civil penalty is raised to $10,000 from $5,000, and any subsequent offense shall result in the revocation of the operators permit.

For more information about the IDOL, visit the website at http://labor.illinois.gov. IDOL can also be found on Facebook @ILDeptofLabor or on Twitter @ILDeptofLabor.