With Starbucks’ recent announcement that the company has achieved 100 percent pay equity by race and gender for U.S. workers performing similar jobs, most employers are left wondering how Starbucks got there—and how they can get there, too. The topic of equal pay continues to make headlines, and California, Oregon, and Washington are at the…
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The California Supreme Court has rejected federal law on overtime calculations for flat sum bonuses, ruling that state law requires a more worker-friendly calculation. An employer offered a flat bonus of $15 per day of weekend work for employees who worked a full shift on a Saturday or Sunday. Because…
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An employer’s award of a bonus based on a percentage of overtime earnings didn’t require any extra overtime payments, ruled a federal district court in California. The decision illustrates how a dispute over 12 cents can literally turn into a federal case. During one particular workweek, an employee earned $4.745 in overtime.…
Read More…The 2017 California legislative session has drawn to a close, and Governor Jerry Brown recently signed a slew of new bills affecting private employers. Below are the major employment-related bills that affect most California employers. All of them take effect on January 1, 2018. AB 168: Bans employers from asking job…
Read More…A California employer successfully defended itself against an age discrimination claim when it relied on objective reasons to implement a reduction in force (RIF). A 60-year old employee claimed that his hotel employer selected him for a RIF due to his age and that this violated California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act…
Read More…Passed in 2015 and amended in 2016, California’s Fair Pay Act (FPA) is one of the toughest laws of its kind in the nation. California employers face much greater obligations under the FPA than ever before. The FPA is a complex law that expanded an older law that had been around…
Read More…Starting March 1, 2017, new legislation approved by California Governor Jerry Brown will require public single-user bathrooms to be designated as “all-gender.”
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Governor Brown has signed two companion bills designed to improve pay equity in the workplace. The first expands California’s groundbreaking pay equity law beyond gender so it also covers race and ethnicity (SB 1063). The second forbids employers from using prior salary as the sole justification for a pay disparity based on…
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Showing just how far an employer must go to satisfy California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), a federal district court recently refused to dismiss an employee’s claim that his employer failed to engage in a second round of disability accommodation talks.
Read More…The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) recently issued new guidance for employers regarding transgender rights in the workplace. In order to be protected by the law, a transgender person does not need to complete any particular step in a gender transition (social or medical). The new guidance…
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