1. Overtime rules are still contentious.

The DOL's new overtime rule, which goes into effect Dec. 1, raises the income level below which workers must be paid overtime, thus giving overtime to a DOL-estimated 4 million new workers.

The rule is controversial. Tuesday's session showed that the Chamber, which sued in September to stop the rule, is still strongly opposed.

Freedman emphasized the effect of the regulation on companies and nonprofits—which are also covered. He said companies "will have to give up some margin" and nonprofits "will have to sacrifice mission," to pay more workers overtime.

Weil countered that the regulation leaves room for employers to adjust hours worked and shift workload to comply with the new rule.

"We're not in this to play some big 'gotcha' game," he said of the DOL's attitude toward overtime compliance.

2. Business is still concerned about greater disclosure of demographic and pay data.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's updated annual EEO-1 form, which as of March 2018 will require employers to disclose demographic and pay data about their workforce in 10 job categories and 12 pay bands, is still causing agitation for employers.

To demonstrate the compliance burden the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sees in the new form, Plunkett took out a hard copy of the new EEO-1 form and unrolled it until it took up most of the length of the conference stage.

"This has been approved under the Paperwork Reduction Act," he said. "Only in Washington, D.C., right?"

3. "Sub-regulations" may get companies down.

Regulatory burden on businesses also came up frequently, including what the business group's Freedman calls "subregulatory" work—guidance and rules that are released by agencies without going though the usual evaluation and comment periods.

Related: Overtime ruling and the impact on employee benefits

Freedman said in an interview after the session that the next president's administration "needs to be much more restrained on how they use subregulatory activities." He cited two examples of these initiatives from the DOL—one on employee misclassification and another on joint employer relationships.

Weil released these two guidance documents to explain, respectively, how the department will evaluate employee versus independent contractor status under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and how it will test whether two employers should share joint liability for labor law violations.

4. Labor Department continues scrutiny of "fissured" workplace.

DOL's Weil said his team will continue to focus on what he calls the "fissured workplace"—companies' use of subcontractors, franchising and outsourcing to operate parts of its business.

Weil said that when a company uses a partner entity like a staffing agency and exercises control over employees of that agency they have "skin in the game." "Therefore, we need to think about [the company's] role as a party to the employment relationship," he said.

5. Do "sharing economy" workers need a new classification?

The emergence of the "sharing economy" has raised questions about employee classification for workers like on-demand drivers, who have sued Uber Technologies Inc. over their status as independent contractors.

Some have suggested a third category is necessary to accommodate the unique tech platform-enabled work performed by those in the sharing economy. Weil disagrees.

"For a lot of what we see in this small space, [workers] are still reasonably evaluated with the existing kinds of designations," Weil said in an interview after the session.