Wage-Hour

Introduction Arbitration is not a perfect substitute for a jury trial. Appeals are limited, many arbitrators favor a “split the baby” result, and the employer bears most of the cost. Some claims cannot be arbitrated at all — most prominently, representative PAGA claims and sexual harassment and assault claims. Even so, the advantages usually outweigh…

Founders have finite bandwidth, and in the early days, employment law compliance rarely feels as urgent as fundraising, product development, and building out the team. But the choices you make as you scale from 0 to 25 employees can have outsized consequences later—particularly when it comes to hiring, pay practices and leave obligations, and basic…

California employers scored an important win last week when the California Court of Appeal enforced an employee’s “standing” prospective meal period waiver. That decision, in Bradsbery v. Vicar Operating, Inc., confirmed that meal periods for shifts between five and six hours can be “waived by mutual consent” even in a prospective (i.e., forward-looking) waiver. Procedural…

In a dramatic expansion of the Ending Forced Arbitration of Sexual Assault & Sexual Harassment Act (“EFAA”), two recent California Court of Appeal decisions have held that plaintiffs can avoid being compelled to arbitration so long as their lawsuit contains at least an allegation of sexual assault or harassment. Background In the wake of the…

In this informative 75-minute webinar (including a question and answer session at the end), Hirschfeld Kraemer Partners Derek Ishikawa, Ferry Lopez and Monte Grix will cover major employment law developments for 2024 and help you get thinking of what your business needs to do to avoid being a target of litigation. The topics to be…

On October 4, 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 616 and expanded California’s sick leave law, the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014. As a result, California employers must be prepared to comply by January 1, 2024, notably by increasing the amount of paid sick leave provided to employees. Paid Sick Leave Under…

Effective January 1, 2023, California’s new broad pay transparency bill requiring employers to include pay ranges in all job advertisements will take effect. The bill also requires employers to submit expanded annual pay data reports that include pay data on employees hired through labor contractors to the California Civil Rights Department (CRD) beginning May 10,…

The Hotel Worker Protection Ordinance, proposed by UNITE HERE Local 11 to require, among other things, daily room cleaning, panic buttons, limitations on overtime and housekeepers’ workloads, and increased wages, was passed by the Los Angeles City Council on June 28, 2022, rather than allowing the issue to be decided via a Ballot Initiative by…

If you use a staffing agency for your workforce, the California Supreme Court just issued an important decision that may affect your rights. In Grande v. Eisenhower Medical Center, the California Supreme Court held that a wage-hour class action settlement for $750,000 between an employee and the staffing company did not preclude the employee from…

This coming Monday, June 20, 2022, will be the second Juneteenth officially recognized as a federal holiday in the U.S. All federal government offices, federal courts, banks, post offices, schools, and the U.S. financial markets will be closed. Many private employers are following suit, although they are not legally required to give employees time off….