Skip to main content

What I've Been Reading This Week



California's Harsh New Standard: Employers Can Recover Attorneys Fees Only if Employee Brought Wage Action in Bad Faith

Effective January 1, 2014, California Labor Code Section 218.5 provides that employers can only recover their attorneys fees if they prevail in a wage action suit if it can be shown the employee brought the action in bad faith.  This article gives a bit of background on how Senate Bill 462 was created and how this law came into effect.


New Jersey Inching Closer Towards Banning Employers From Asking About Applicant's Criminal History

David Katz does a great job explaining how New Jersey is on the verge of banning employers from asking potential employee's about their criminal history.  In a 6-3 vote, New Jersey’s Assembly Labor Committee advanced a bill that would prohibit New Jersey employers with 15 or more employees from asking candidates about their criminal history on employment applications, and from conducting criminal background checks on applicants prior to a conditional job offer.  Under the proposed legislation, only after the employer determines the candidate is qualified and provides a conditional job offer, may it inquire about and consider the individual’s criminal history.  However, before the employer can look into the candidate’s criminal history, it must first provide the candidate with a written notice of the inquiry and obtain the candidate’s consent.


Governor Brown's (CA) Veto of Union Agent & Represented Employee

This article includes Governor Brown's comments on his decision to veto AB 729 which would have established an evidentiary privilege that would prohibit the disclosure of confidential communications between represented employees and their union agents.  Had this been done, it could have impeded employers in investigations and lawsuits surrounding workplace conduct.  While this bill is dead for now, this might not be the last we hear of a similar pro union piece of legislation on the topic.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

NLRB: Discussion Among Employees About Tip Pooling is Protected Concerted Activity

  This Advice Memorandum from the National Labor Relations Board’s Associate General Counsel, Jayme Sophir, addressed whether employees which discussed and complained about tip pooling at work constituted protected concerted activity. In relevant part, an employer in New York operated a chain of steakhouses.  While tip pooling was in place at these steakhouses, some of the employees objected to it on the grounds that it was not transparent and improperly divided tips among the workers.  Employees were told not to complain or talk to each other about the tip pool and were told that doing so would endanger their jobs.  Despite the employer later attempting to provide some clarity as to how the tips were being divided, rancor still existed among some employees.  At one point, the employees were told by a general manager that some employees that had been talking about the tip pool were “cleared out” and the employer would continue to do so. In the Advice Memorandum, it was noted that emplo
Post a Comment
Read more

What I’ve Been Reading This Week

A few years ago, I remember when the “Fight for $15” movement was taking off around the country.  Lo and behold, it appears that a $15/hour minimum wage is not the stopping point, which should be no surprise.  As the below article notes, New York is aggressively moving to ramp up hourly wage rates even higher.  While all the  below articles are worth a read, I called particular attention to that one. As always, below are a couple article that caught my eye this week. Disney World Workers Reject Latest Contract Offer Late last week, it was announced that workers at Disney World had rejected the most recent contract offer from the company, calling on their employer to do better.  As Brooks Barnes at The New York Times writes, the unions that represent about 32,000 workers at Disney World reported their members resoundingly rejected the 5 year contract offer which would have seen workers receive a 10% raise and retroactive increased back pay.  While Disney’s offer would have increased pa
Post a Comment
Read more

Utah Non-Compete Bill Falters in House

Last month, a non-compete bill sponsored by Representative Brian Greene (Republican from Pleasant Grove) & up for vote in the Utah House failed to make it through the Legislature.  The bill sought to ban enforcement of non-competes if they came after a worker was already employed, given no compensation (such as a bonus or promotion) for signing the non-compete, and laid off within six months.  However, by a 22 - 49 vote, the bill was resoundingly defeated after some business groups lobbied to kill the non-compete bill.  One group in particular, The Free Enterprise Utah coalition, argued that the Utah State Legislature should hold off on any changes to non compete laws in the state until a survey about non competes was done among Utah businesses.  Representative Greene had countered this claim and argued that a survey was not needed to show that the current non compete laws in the states allowed many businesses, including some small high tech companies in the state, to per
Post a Comment
Read more