Employment, Labor & Benefits

After being in effect for a year, California’s groundbreaking gender parity law for public company boards, while under legal attack, has not (yet) been enjoined in a similar manner to other recent creative California regulatory initiatives (notably the law banning independent contractors in the state, part of which have now been enjoined by various courts, as well as California’s attempt to ban arbitration provisions, which has now been enjoined in its entirety). Given that the gender parity law has survived to date, a brief review of its status is in order.

AB 5’s elimination of independent contracting as we know it in California will have significant legal consequences for businesses doing business in California. While we believe board directors will escape its reach, businesses with advisory boards should proceed with caution. Effective January 1, 2020, AB 5 will presume that every California worker is an employee unless the hiring entity establishes that the worker meets the three criteria of the so-called “ABC” test, or the worker satisfies one of the law’s exemptions.

Under the new Massachusetts Paid Family and Medical Leave Law, M.G.L c. 175M (“MAPFML”), employees and other covered individuals in the Commonwealth will be entitled to a generous set of new paid leave benefits and rights beginning January 1, 2021.

The arrival of the holiday season means that 2020 is just around the corner.  In anticipation of the new year, employers should take time to review upcoming changes to the requirements of the New York Paid Family Leave Law (NYPFL or PFL) and ensure compliance with any leave requests that may soon come their way.

The Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and the Treasury (collectively, the “Departments”) issued a coordinated set of final regulations (“final rules”) permitting employers to, among other things, make individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements (ICHRAs) available to their employees for the purposes of purchasing individual market health insurance coverage

In addition to death and taxes, there’s one more certainty in life -- that California’s General Assembly will keep employment lawyers in business. In September and October, California enacted a pair of ground-shifting new laws that practically scream “NO” to employers. These new laws are causing employers to scramble.

The D.C. council is considering legislation that would prohibit the use of non-compete provisions for entry level and moderate-income employees, and would apply to D.C. workers that earn up to three times the minimum wage, currently equal to $87,654 annually.   

The EEOC announced a new deadline by which employers should submit their Component 2 data: November 11, 2019.  The EEOC requested that the court confirm this deadline, by which time the EEOC anticipates to have reached or exceeded its target percentage of a 72.7% response rate.

The California Consumer Privacy Act becomes effective on January 1, 2020 with an amendment that impacts California employers. Covered businesses should, of course, already be in the process of preparing CCPA privacy notices and disclosures. And while the amendment carves out some of the direct CCPA provisions applicable to California employers, employee data – and how it is handled – should also be on every covered employers’ to do list.

California Governor Gavin Newsom just signed AB 51 into law, which means that effective January 1, 2020, employers will (purportedly) be prohibited from requiring employees to consent to mandatory arbitration of employment claims. Here is what your business needs to do now:

New York recently extended its protections of the New York City Human Rights Law to non-employees, including contractors and freelancers, following in the footsteps of New York State, which recently amended its Human Rights Law in a similar manner.  The new law will go into effect in January 2020.  We wanted to highlight an important development that arises out of the change in this law. 

Calculating overtime pay for tipped employees working in multiple positions at different rates in a single workweek can be confusing. So confusing, in fact, that we discovered that even the District of Columbia’s Department of Employment Services (“DOES”) was getting it wrong in guidance published on its website. Before reviewing what DOES did wrong, let’s briefly review the key principles to keep in mind when calculating overtime pay for tipped and non-tipped employees in Washington, D.C.

This week, Law360 published an article by our colleague and thought leader Jen Rubin that reflects on progress toward gender parity arising out of the #MeToo movement.

On September 27, the EEOC announced in a court filing that collection of Component 2 data is continuing as long as “the Court’s order is in effect stating that collection will not be complete until it reaches what the Court has determined to be the target response rate. . .”

The Department of Labor (DOL) released the final version of its long-anticipated update to the rule calculating overtime eligibility under the Fair Labor Standards Act.  As you might recall, the DOL attempted to update the overtime rule back in 2016, but some states and business groups who opposed the rule successfully challenged it in court. The Final Rule increases the “standard salary level” to qualify for an exemption from overtime, but not as drastically as the attempted 2016 update.  The final rule is effective January 1, 2020, and we highlight its key provisions and provide next-step guidance below:

In a significant victory for California employers who use arbitration agreements, the California Supreme Court ruled (ZB, N.A. et al. v. Superior Court of San Diego County, S246711 (September 12, 2019)) that the recovery of underpaid wages was not a civil penalty recoverable under the Private Attorney General Act, Labor Code section 2699 et seq. (“PAGA”), and that claims seeking such recovery were indeed subject to individual arbitration in accordance with Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles LLC (2014) 59 Cal.4th 348.

Read about the AB 5, a bill passed by the California legislature that effectively bans nearly all categories of independent contractors, not just gig economy workers.