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The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors recently enacted an urgency ordinance that requires employers to provide supplemental paid leave of up to four hours per injection for employees working in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County to obtain the COVID-19 vaccine. The Employee Paid Leave for Expanded Vaccine Access Ordinance (the Ordinance) is effective retroactively to January 1, 2021 and will remain in effect until August 31, 2021.

Covered employers and eligible employees

The Ordinance applies to all employers who have employees working in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County. The Ordinance establishes a presumption that a worker is an employee and the employer bears the burden to demonstrate that a worker is a bona fide independent contractor, and thus not entitled to any benefits under the Ordinance.

Covered employers must provide “COVID-19 Vaccine Leave” to eligible employees to:

  1. Travel to and from a COVID-19 vaccine appointment;
  2. Receive the COVID-19 vaccine injection; and
  3. Recover from any symptoms related to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine that prevent the employees from being able to work or telework.

Eligible employees are those who: 1) work in the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County; and 2) have exhausted all available leave time under California’s 2021 COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave Law, codified as Labor Code section 248.2. In other words, because Labor Code section 248.2 already requires employers to provide up to 80 hours of paid leave to employees for the same reasons as the Ordinance, employees must first use all available paid leave provided by Labor Code section 248.2 before they are eligible for paid leave under the Ordinance.
Continue Reading It pays to be vaccinated in Los Angeles County with new paid leave ordinance

Employers considering requiring their employees sign arbitration agreements with class waivers just got a real-world example of the effectiveness of such agreements. On September 25, 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld the enforceability of arbitration agreements signed by thousands of Uber drivers in California. In the underlying lawsuits, the Uber…

The changes to employees’ rights to take leave under the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) go into effect July 1, 2015. Your company should be prepared only if it has done the following:

  • Reviewed the changes to the CFRA regulations, which may be found here.
  • Updated your policies and employee handbooks to reflect the legal changes in CFRA eligibility, medical certification, and leave administration.
  • Trained managers, supervisors and human resources professionals on the CFRA legal changes.
  • Updated electronic and hard copy postings and notices regarding CFRA leave – ensuring they are legible; in large, easy-to-read text; with the postings in conspicuous places that can be viewed by both employees and applicants.
  • Ensured that all postings and notices are translated in any language(s) spoken by 10 percent or more of the workforce.

The amended CFRA regulations synthesize the requirements for CFRA leave with those under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to the extent there are no conflicts between the federal and state laws. Here are the key points in the revised CFRA regulations for employers:Continue Reading Is Your Company Prepared for the Changes to CFRA Leave?

Effective January 1, 2014, California’s Fair Employment & Housing Act (Gov. Code §§12940, et seq.) has been amended to push the boundaries of what counts as employment discrimination. California employers should revise all postings, employee handbooks and training materials to reflect two important changes in the law.   Continue Reading California Expands the Frontiers of Employment Discrimination–Again

2013 is shaping up to be the year that that party ended for state evasion of the Federal Arbitration Act. States have traditionally relied on a number of stratagems to avoid the preemptive force of the FAA’s “liberal federal policy favoring arbitration.” (Moses H. Cone Mem’l Hosp. v. Mercury Constr. Corp., 460 U.S. 1, 24 [1983]). One was to hide behind the FAA’s “savings clause,” which permits states to refuse to enforce arbitration agreements on “such grounds as exist at law or in equity for the revocation of any contract.” 9 U.S.C. § 2. The savings clause preserves generic contract defenses such as fraud, duress or unconscionability, and ensures that they are not preempted. States made liberal use of the savings clause to avoid the FAA’s enforcement mandate by deploying a veneer to generality to save rules aimed at limiting the enforcement of arbitration agreements.Continue Reading 9th Inning, Two Outs, None On for California State Courts That Ignore Federal Arbitration Act

California employers, who, only thirteen months ago, thought they no longer had to worry about wage/hour class actions by employees over meal and other rest breaks need to worry again.

When the California Supreme Court handed down its blockbuster decision in Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court, 53 Cal.4th 1004 (2012), thirteen months ago, California employers collectively sighed in relief. Why? Because Brinker’s main holding was that employers only need to provide an opportunity for employees to take meal breaks. There was no need for employees to actually clock out and stop work for breaks. Because liability turned on whether an employee consented to missing a break, most observers concluded that such an inherently employee-by-employee would make class action lawsuits and class-based relief impossible, unless a rash employer prohibited employees from taking breaks.Continue Reading Alice is Back in Wonderland: Meal Break Policies Must be 100% Legal to Blunt Employee Class Actions in California Even in Absence of Actual Violation

Under California law, employers must provide their employees with wage statements that contain nine specific categories of information. See Cal. Labor Code § 226(a)(1)-(9).  Plaintiffs in California wage and hour actions regularly and routinely have included section 226 claims with other wage allegations, claiming non-compliance by employers. And until January 1, 2013, employers have, in some circumstances, defended against section 226 claims and escaped monetary liability by arguing that employees must show some sort of injury resulting from any technical violation under the express language of section 226. The new law responds to several conflicting court opinions on the definition of “injury” by defining “suffering injury” to recover damages for wage statement violations under section 226. Specifically, an employee suffers injury if:Continue Reading Act Now On California Labor Code Sec. 226 Amendments

Our Global Regulatory Enforcement colleagues Lisa B. Kim, Steven Boranian and Joshua B. Marker have written a blog post discussing a proposed amendment to California’s “Shine the Light” law seeks to require companies to disclose more detailed information about their data-sharing practices, while giving consumers the ability to bring class action lawsuits under the…