By: California Workplace Violence Prevention Plan Compliance: July 1, 2024 Deadline – Are You Ready? By: California Workplace Violence Prevention Plan Compliance: July 1, 2024 Deadline – Are You Ready? Effective July 1, 2024, all California employers (with a few exceptions) – regardless of industry – are required to: (1) have a written Workplace Violence Prevention Plan (“WVPP”), (2) train employees on the WVPP, workplace violence hazard identification and reporting, (3) conduct periodic workplace hazard inspections, and (4) maintain an incident log. There is no grace period or ramp-up period ..read more

By: California Contemplates Right to Disconnect Law California Assembly member Matt Haney has introduced the first “right to disconnect” law in the United States, Assembly Bill 2751 (A.B. 2751). Under the proposed legislation, employers would be required to define employees' nonworking hours in writing and prohibits employers from contacting workers during these designated nonworking hours, except in cases of “emergencies” or schedule changes. Implications Despite its purported good intentions, A.B. 2751 is fraught with ambiguities and questionable practical application, leaving a chasm for mi ..read more

By: Tsunami of CIPA Class Actions Storming California Businesses By: Tsunami of CIPA Class Actions Storming California Businesses California businesses are experiencing a tsunami of demands and complaints alleging class action status that applies the well-established 1960’s California Invasion of Privacy Act (CIPA) to the internet’s new technology. CIPA is a pre-internet era law aimed to curb unlawful telephone wiretapping and other electronic surveillance such as pen registers. A pen register is a device that traces outgoing signals from a telephone or computer and that is often used by law e ..read more

By: Ensuring Your Severance Agreements Are Lawful By: Ensuring Your Severance Agreements Are Lawful Approximately one year ago, we reported on the National Labor Relations Board’s decision in McLaren Macomb and NLRB General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo’s subsequent interpretation of that decision and what it means for employers in NLRB GC Memorandum 23-05. The McLaren Macomb decision put new restrictions limiting how employers can use non-disparagement clauses and confidentiality clauses in severance agreements, holding that typical non-disparagement clauses and confidentiality clau ..read more

By: California Supreme Court Examines Compensable Time Based On Security Checks On Monday, the California Supreme Court issued its opinion in Huerta v. CSI Electrical Contractors Inc., answering three questions about the scope of the term “hours worked” in Wage Order No. 16. While Wage Order No.16 governs the construction, drilling, logging, and mining industries, the interpretation of the term “hours worked” will likely be defined similarly for Wage Orders governing other industries. The California Supreme Court’s opinion comes from the certification of a request from the Ninth Circuit to pro ..read more

By: LA County Expands California’s “Ban the Box” Effective March 28, 2024 Since California’s enactment of the Fair Chance Act (“Act”) over six years ago, California’s private and county employers with five or more employees have become well-acquainted with the Act’s general prohibition of employers asking applicants to disclose conviction history before making a job conditional job offer. Los Angeles County employers with five or more employees in unincorporated areas of LA County now must be mindful of additional requirements under the County’s new Fair Chance Ordinance For Employers sta ..read more

By: California Labor Enforcement Agency Clarifies Sick Leave Rule Effective January 1, 2024, California law requires employers to provide employees at least forty (40) hours or five (5) days of Paid Sick Leave (PSL) per year, up from 24 hours/3 days in previous years. The revised legislation still requires employers who use an accrual method of PSL to apply an accrual rate of no less than one hour of PSL for every 30 hours worked. However, the amended law states that the employer satisfies those accrual requirements only by providing the employee no less than 24 hours of PSL by the 120th day o ..read more

By: NLRB’s New Joint Employment Rules Struck Down By Federal District Court In October 2023, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued its new Final Rule addressing and expanding the proper standard for determining joint employment status under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). This was an important rule governing questions like: When can employees from a temporary staffing agency be included in the same bargaining unit as regular employees? When can employees for two franchisees be considered as part of the same bargaining unit? The Final Rule adopted in October made it much e ..read more

By: Deleting Relevant Text Messages Can Cost You Earlier this week, the Ninth Circuit in Jones v. Riot Hospitality Group, 2024 WL 927669 (9th Cir. Mar. 5, 2024) affirmed the dismissal of an employee’s claims against her employer and found that terminating sanctions were appropriate where the employee deleted relevant text messages, and organized with her witnesses to do the same, with the intention of depriving defendant of their use during litigation. In 2017, Plaintiff Alyssa Jones, a former waitress, sued her ex-employer, Riot Hospitality Group (“Riot”), in Arizona district court for allege ..read more

By: Updates to Notices and Pamphlets California Employers Must Provide to New Hires Employers should be aware of three recent updates to certain notices and pamphlets that California employers must provide new hires.  Labor Code 2810.5 Notice California Labor Code section 2810.5 requires that employers provide nonexempt employees with written notice regarding their wages, including pay rates, overtime rates, and designated paydays. The notice must be provided at the time of hire and within seven days of a change to the information set forth in the notice, unless the changes are reflected ..read more