In Silicon Beach and throughout Los Angeles, offering meals to employees is becoming the norm. And not just any meals, but gourmet meals that cater to carnivores and vegans alike. While employees are thrilled, employers may be starting to look at their bottom line and question how long they can afford such a luxury. Perhaps…
DetailsWith the seemingly endless claims surrounding employee misclassification (think Uber, Lyft, and the now out-of-business HomeJoy), many employers are understandably cautious about how they classify their workers. Unfortunately, there is no single test that enables an employer to quickly or easily determine whether an individual can/should be hired as an independent contractor/consultant/freelancer or as an…
DetailsMany employers incorrectly assume that if an employee is salaried (paid a flat amount rather than an hourly wage and not subject to partial-day or partial-week deductions), that employee is exempt from overtime. Unfortunately, and perhaps not surprisingly, this is not always the case. Generally speaking, being paid on a “salary basis” is a prerequisite…
DetailsAs we have discussed previously in this blog, wage and hour lawsuits continue to be prevalent. Employers big and small have been facing an upward trend in wage-hour lawsuits over the past 10-15 years, and there is currently no end in sight. In the year 2000, for example, there were approximately 2,000 wage-hour claims filed…
DetailsWhistleblowers, who are individuals who report a person or organization engaged in an allegedly illicit activity, are protected from workplace retaliation under a number of federal and state laws, including the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA), Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank, the Clean Air Act, the California Whistleblower Protection Act, and many others. In other words,…
DetailsRPNA attorneys Nicholas Roxborough, Joseph Gjonola and Ryan Salsig won a victory for California workers’ comp policyholders with the recent court decision stating Applied Underwriters, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, can’t enforce the arbitration provision in side agreements that were not filed with the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau (WCIRB). What makes this March 16…
DetailsAs we discussed at length in this post, this year we will see substantial changes to FEHA that will affect business owners across the country, including in California. To get specific, FEHA’s new regulations set forth that, as of April 1, 2016, employers must have anti-discrimination and harassment policies that: · Are in writing. · …
Details2016 is a busy year in the often-changing world of California employment law. We have discussed many of the updates employers need to be aware of here (think minimum wage increase, the Fair Pay Act, changes to Unruh, and more). The newest change that California businesses need to be aware of involves changes to the…
DetailsRetaliation in the workplace, whether imagined or not, continues to account for almost half of all employment claims filed with the EEOC. Last year, in 2015, 44.5% of the charges filed were for retaliation. In other words, a majority of disgruntled employees claim not that they were discriminated against, but that they received adverse treatment…
DetailsIn our technologically-driven world, many California employers have the ability to monitor their employees’ whereabouts through the use of GPS – but does that mean they should? GPS tracking has been a reality for several years. Through the use of GPS devices in vehicles, employers have been able to keep track of their employees’ locations…
Details