The California on-call pay laws are largely based on balancing fairness between employees and employers. Generally, hours for which an employee has been hired to do nothing while merely waiting for something to happen are hours subject to the control of the employers, and constitute hours worked. (Armour & Co.…
Both California employees and employers must know that an unprotected medical leave without a promise of reinstatement is not an accommodate under California disability laws. An accommodation by definition is a change or adjustment which allows disabled individuals to perform their job. A leave of absence without a corresponding right…
There are two important things any employee who moves for a new job and receives a relocation package as part of the job offer, should keep in mind: (1) Review the repayment obligation in your relocation package to make sure that it’s fairly drafted. Most relocation packages and sign-on bonuses…
Under California Labor Code section 515.5, certain software industry employees are exempt from overtime pay requirements, if they perform specific, exempt duties and receive a rate of pay not less than the statutorily-specified rate. Effective January 1, 2020, the computer software employee’s minimum hourly rate of pay, in order to…
In most cases, it’s not a good idea for an employer to refuse to issue an employee his final paycheck until he repays his relocation bonus. Likewise, it’s a bad idea to unilaterally deduct the relocation bonus amount from that employee’s final paycheck. Here is why: First, an employee’s failure…
Many employers use temporary staffing agencies and recruiting agencies for hiring workers, in part, in order to insulate themselves from liability for potential discrimination, retaliation, and wrongful termination claims. They believe and are often advised that if their workers are hired through and are paid by an outside agency, then…
In order to decide whether to file a case for wage violation or harassment / discrimination against the employer that you are still working for, you should take into account not only the legal aspects of your potential case but also the practical factors. In the short audio recording below,…
Discrimination on the basis of an employee’s foreign accent is a sufficient basis for finding national origin discrimination. Fragante v. Honolulu (9th Cir. 1989) Indeed, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Guidelines currently define national origin discrimination broadly as including, but not limited to, the denial of equal employment opportunity because…
California law on bereavement leave at work can be divided into two categories: private and public employment. If you are an employee at a private company, as of this date, your employer has no obligation to provide any bereavement leave, although the employer may choose to include time off for…
The California Court of Appeal has recently issued a decision in the Ross v County of Riverside case, which is quite helpful to those employees who take time off to be tested for a serious illness, whether they end up being actually diagnosed with it or not. The court took…