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Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights, Employer Rights, Employment Law, News on July 24, 2014
Many people often ask me, “Is it harassment if my coworker makes racist remarks?” The answer: maybe. Not every mean or rude comment qualifies as harassment. On the other hand, many employees suffer long periods of unlawful harassment or sexual harassment from their fellow employees but are unaware of what they can do about it.
... read more.Posted in Employee Rights, Employer Rights, Employment Law, News, Wage and Hour on July 24, 2014
Who is entitled to overtime pay in California? Both federal and California law requires that employees be paid the minimum wage for all hours worked and that nonexempt employees be paid the proper overtime pay rate for overtime hours worked. Stating the rule is the easy part. How is it applied in practice? First, one
... read more.Posted in Employee Rights, Employer Rights, Employment Law, News on July 23, 2014
Should an employer have the right to disqualify applicants based on criminal convictions? If so, should the law impose any limitations on this right? There exist strong arguments on either side of the debate. From the employer’s perspective, uniform application of a policy excluding candidates who have a criminal conviction – i.e., application of the
... read more.Posted in Employee Rights, News, Wage and Hour on July 11, 2014
The default rule is that California employers must pay all their employees overtime. Employees who work overtime are entitled to 1.5 times their normal hourly pay, or “time and a half” for each hour worked over 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week. Lab. Code 510, subd. (a). However, there are several categories
... read more.Posted in Case Updates, Employee Rights, Employment Law, News on July 8, 2014
Ayala v. Antelope Valley Newspapers (California Supreme Court) What It’s About: Newspaper home delivery carriers claiming they had been misclassified as independent contractors, brought a class action for overtime wages, unreimbursed business expenses, and other employment benefits. Affirming a Court of Appeal decision, the California Supreme Court found that the trial court had erred in
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights, Employment Law, News on July 3, 2014
Two days ago, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal of a former United Parcel Service employee’s claim that the company violated the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) when it refused to provide accommodations for her lifting restrictions during her pregnancy, despite the fact that it provides accommodations to non-pregnant employees with
... read more.Posted in Employee Rights, Employer Rights, Employment Law, News on July 2, 2014
According to the United Nations, out of 185 countries and territories with available information, the United States is one of the only three countries in the world, along with Papa New Guinea and Oman, lacking paid maternity leave. Most developed countries provide both paid maternity and paternity leave, and paid family and sick leave. Countries that
... read more.Posted in Appeals, Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights, News on June 28, 2014
Yesterday, the California Supreme Court decided Salas v. Sierra Chemical Co., affirming that the protections of California employment law are available to undocumented immigrants. In 2002, the California Legislature enacted Senate Bill 1818 in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Hoffman Plastic Compounds, Inc. v. NLRB limiting the ability of undocumented employees fired
... read more.Posted in Employee Rights, Medical and Sick Leave, News on June 25, 2014
When employees are diagnosed with serious illnesses or injuries, they often need to take time off to seek treatment and recover. If the employee’s condition qualifies as a disability under the American Disabilities Act (ADA) or the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), then an employer may be required to provide the employee with
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights, Employer Rights, News on June 20, 2014
California PFL In 2004, California’s Paid Family Leave (PFL) law took effect. This law provides wage replacement benefits from the state disability insurance program for employees who take a leave of absence to care for a seriously ill child, spouse, parent, or domestic partner, or to bond with a minor child within one year of
... read more.Posted in Civil Rights, Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights, Employment Law on June 17, 2014
This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the bestselling pregnancy manual What to Expect When You’re Expecting. The most recent edition of What to Expect includes some general information about the legal rights of pregnant employees under federal law alongside practical advice about how to tell your boss you are pregnant and tips for staying safe and healthy on
... read more.Posted in Employee Rights, Employer Rights, News on June 11, 2014
“We don’t really investigate FMLA violations.” This was the candid message that an investigator with the U.S. Department of Labor shared with me last year, in explaining that wage and hour violations, not violations of the Family Medical Leave Act, were the agency’s priority. But change is coming, and fast. As FMLA Insights reported in
... read more.Posted in Case Updates, News on June 10, 2014
Laguna v. Coverall North America, Inc. (Ninth Circuit) What It’s About: Over an objection and the dissent of Judge Chen, this Ninth Circuit majority opinion approved the pre-certification class settlement of misclassification claims, as well as claims related to the franchise agreements between the defendant janitorial franchising company and its franchisees. The decision held that
... read more.Posted in Civil Rights, Employee Rights, Employment Law on June 5, 2014
Telecommuting as Disability Accommodation? When Yahoo! CEO Marisa Mayer implemented a ban on telecommuting at the company in 2013, the initial backlash seemed to focus primarily on her taking a step that would most harm those for whom she had served as a role model – working mothers in Silicon Valley. After stepping into the
... read more.Posted in Case Updates, News on June 2, 2014
Duran v. U.S. Bank National Association What It’s About: In a much-anticipated decision, the California Supreme Court struck down a $15 million trial court verdict obtained on behalf of employees who claimed they were misclassified as overtime-exempt, due to the trial court’s “flawed implementation of sampling,” which did not permit the defendant to present its
... read more.Posted in Employee Rights, Employment Law, News on May 31, 2014
Can Doctors Negotiate Contracts? I’m surrounded by doctors. No, I’m not in a hospital, I’m just married to one (a doctor-to-be, that is). My husband is an M.D./PhD student, who recently finished his Ph.D. and is currently in his third year of medical school. Many of our friends are medical students, residents, and fully licensed
... read more.Posted in Employment Law, Whistleblowers on May 17, 2014
Journalists have called 2014 the year of the whistleblower. The recent award of a Pulitzer to the Guardian and the Washington Post for stories based on Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks have again sparked debates about what should be covered as whistleblowing activity and how far those protections should extend. However, one form of whistleblowing continues
... read more.Posted in Wage and Hour on May 7, 2014
More than a decade has passed since plaintiffs filed Wang v. Chinese Daily News, Case No. 04-cv-01498 (C.D. Cal.), and more than nine years have passed since the plaintiffs first obtained certification of a California class of hourly employees and later successfully tried the case and won a $5.1 million verdict in the case for
... read more.Posted in Employee Rights, Employment Law, News on May 3, 2014
Ilya Somin over at the Volokh Conspiracy has an interesting post about the implications of the Brendan Eich/Mozilla affair. For those of us in California, of course, free speech protections in the workplace are nothing new. California law has long prohibited employers from punishing employees for expressing their political views. For example, Labor Code sections
... read more.Posted in Civil Rights on May 2, 2014
The U.S. Department of Justice recently announced that it will not appeal the January 2014 ruling of U.S. District Judge William Alsup, that the placement of Rahinah Ibrahim on the no-fly list violated due process. In that case, Judge Alsup held that the existing redress procedure, the Department of Homeland Security Traveler Redress Inquiry Program
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights, Employment Law on April 16, 2014
In its first published ruling on the subject, a California appeals court has rejected as unreasonable and as against public policy an employer’s attempt to contractually shorten the amount of time an employee has to sue under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). Pursuant to the FEHA’s statutory requirements, codified at Cal. Gov. Code
... read more.Posted in Appeals, News on April 14, 2014
Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit published its opinion in Baumann v. Chase Investment Services Corporation, in which it held that the Class Action Fairness Act (the “CAFA”) does not provide a basis for federal jurisdiction over claims brought under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act (the “PAGA”). In my most recent blog post, I discussed the
... read more.Posted in Appeals, Civil rights in the workplace, News on April 14, 2014
California’s Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act (the “PAGA”) permits employees to step into the shoes of the state and sue their employers for civil penalties for Labor Code violations when the Labor and Workforce Development Agency declines to investigate the violations or issue citations. Under the PAGA, employees may bring suit on behalf of
... read more.Posted in News, Wage and Hour on April 14, 2014
Interesting class certification decision involving security guards and on duty meal periods from the Central District of California last week. Judge Josephine Staton certified meal and rest period claims involving a class of 15,000 security guards who were required to sign on-duty meal period agreements and then work through their meal periods. The district court’s finding that
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, News on April 14, 2014
American society today is engaged in an ongoing cultural conversation about work-life balance and how anyone – and particularly women – can “have it all.” In an effort to address the rapidly changing demographics of the nation’s workforce, San Francisco recently became the first American city to pass a “right to request” law, joining Vermont,
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, News on April 14, 2014
Christmas time raises the question for many employers: what is the role of religion in the workplace? Although questions such as whether a Christmas tree in the hall is appropriate or whether it should be a “holiday” or “Christmas” party can be challenging, there’s one question that the California legislature has recently made easier for
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, News on April 14, 2014
In Rivera v. Peri & Sons Farms, Inc., No. 11-17365, 2013 WL 5992255 (Nov. 13, 2013), the Ninth Circuit ruled that employers of agricultural guest workers participating in the H-2A visa program must reimburse most travel, recruitment, and immigration-related expenses to H-2A workers in their first week on the job, deepening a circuit split on the
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights on April 14, 2014
According to a recent report prepared by the National Women’s Law Center, pregnant workers around the country are very often refused requests for temporary, reasonable modifications to their job duties so they can continue working during pregnancy – for example, the ability to sit for certain periods, to avoid heavy lifting, and to take more frequent bathroom breaks,
... read more.Posted in News, Wage and Hour on April 14, 2014
As I noted earlier – – Big wage and hour news today out of Los Angeles. The Second Appellate District ordered published a powerful opinion reversing a trial court’s order denying class certification in an exempt status misclassification case. The Order in Martinez v. Joe’s Crab Shacks, found here, confirms that the California Supreme Court’s decision
... read more.Posted in News, Undocumented Immigrant Workers on April 14, 2014
New Protections for Undocumented Workers Put California at Vanguard of Progressive Trend in State Legislation The idea that states and localities can-or should-force undocumented immigrants to self-deport by making it impossible for them to work seems to be falling out of favor at last. In California, home to a quarter of the country’s undocumented immigrants,
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights, Employment Law on April 14, 2014
PAGA Overview California’s Private Attorney General Act of 2004-or PAGA-gives private citizens the ability to pursue penalties against employers for violations of the California Labor Code. In cases in which plaintiffs successfully bring PAGA claims, 75% of these penalties go to the state entities (specifically, to the California Labor and Workforce Development Agency or LWDA).
... read more.Posted in Employee Rights, Employment Law, News, Wage and Hour on April 14, 2014
Intern Programs and Compliance With the Law For employers, December raises questions about how to prevent problems at the holiday party and what to do when the alcohol and holiday-spirit induced indiscretions inevitably arise. June brings questions about the unpaid interns scheduled to arrive in the next week or so. Although some companies have in
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights, Employer Rights, Employment Law, News on February 4, 2014
Employers are not under any obligation to provide employment references for former employees. Providing employment references may leave former employers open to legal liability from the former employee and the prospective employer. For example, if the employer makes disparaging comments about a former employee and as a result, the employee is not hired for the
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employer Rights, News on February 4, 2014
Generally, employers are under no obligation to determine whether or not an employee’s substandard performance may be caused by a disability. However, if the employer has received notice that the employee has a disability protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the employer may have an obligation to work with the employee to find
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights, Employer Rights, News on February 4, 2014
Under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), employers are required to provide reasonable accommodations to disabled employees who need them to complete their job duties. An employee who needs a reasonable accommodation should notify the employer. The notification does not need to be in writing, and the employee can request a reasonable accommodation at any
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employer Rights, News on January 30, 2014
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes discrimination based on certain characteristics in employment decisions illegal, including an employee’s or job applicant’s religious practices. Thus, employers may not choose whether or not to hire an applicant based on his or her religion, nor may they make other employment decisions, such as raises
... read more.Posted in Civil rights in the workplace, Employee Rights, Employer Rights, Employment Law, News on January 30, 2014
The federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires covered employers to provide qualified employees with 12 unpaid days of leave from work during a 12 month period for certain purposes, such as the birth or adoption of a child or caring for an immediate family member with a serious health condition. Who Does the
... read more.