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City of Los Angeles Announces Minimum Wage Increase
February 28, 2023 • Diana Lerma
Category: Legal Updates
The City of Los Angeles will increase the minimum wage rate by $.74 as of July 1, 2023. The new City minimum wage will be $16.78. This new wage must be posted at the workplace in English and any other language spoken by at least 5% of the workforce. The City’s notice to all employers can be found here.
San Francisco Requires Differential Pay for Employees on Military Leave
February 23, 2023 • Christina Tantoy
Category: Legal Updates
As of February 20, 2023, San Francisco employers with 100+ employees are required to pay differential (or “supplemental”) pay to employees who are called to active military. This is the new requirement under San Francisco’s latest Ordinance, known as the Military Leave Pay Protection Act (“MLPPA”). The MLPPA essentially requires employers to supplement an employee’s military pay and keep employees whole while they are on military leave.
California Employers May Require Arbitration Agreements as a Condition of Employment
February 17, 2023 • W. Baker Gerwig, IV
Category: Legal Updates
Avid readers of Stokes Wagner’s legal updates may be familiar with California’s Assembly Bill 51, a law that, until very recently, prohibited California employers from requiring employees or job applicants to sign arbitration agreements as a condition of employment or employment-related benefits. On Wednesday, a panel of judges of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held in a 2 to 1 decision that AB 51 is unenforceable, as it is preempted by the Federal Arbitration Act. California employers are once again free to require their employees to sign arbitration agreements.
Illinois Employers are Now Required to Provide Employees with Paid Leave for Any Reason
February 9, 2023 • Christina Tantoy
Category: Legal Updates
Illinois Governor is expected to sign the “Paid Leave for All Workers Act” (SB-208), a statewide law that requires most Illinois employers to provide employees with 40 hours of paid leave per year that an employee may use for any reason. Once the Bill is signed, the law will go into effect on January 1, 2024.
The SECURE 2.0 Act was signed into law on December 29, 2022, and contains several provisions that dictate how employers must offer and administer retirement plans. While Secure 2.0’s provisions are expansive and have different effective dates ranging into 2025, there are some major changes that are worth considering:
On December 29, 2022, President Biden signed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) and the Providing Urgent Maternal Protections for Nursing Mothers Act (PUMP Act) into law.
States, Including California, Seek To Prevent Pay Discrimination by Passing Pay Transparency Laws
January 20, 2023 • Shirley A. Gauvin
Category: Legal Updates
Over the past several years a growing number of cities, counties and states have enacted some form of pay transparency laws covering a wide range of issues. Most of these laws aim to prevent pay discrimination and provide employees with the ability to freely discuss their salaries. More states are passing or amending existing laws to require *salary disclosure *as part of their pay transparency laws. A brief summary of these laws is included below.
What to do if the FTC Bans Non-Compete Agreements
January 12, 2023 • Anne-Marie Mizel
Category: Legal Updates
The Federal Trade Commission issued a proposed rule on January 5, 2023, that would ban the use of so-called “non-compete” agreements, which are often used in certain industries to protect intellectual property and the companies’ investment in training their employees. According to the FTC, approximately 30 million employees are bound by such agreements, and because they decrease competition for workers, they lower wages across the board. “Non-compete clauses also prevent new businesses from forming, stifling entrepreneurship, and prevent novel innovation which would otherwise occur when workers are able to broadly share their ideas.” The FTC estimates that its proposed rule would increase American workers’ earnings “between $250 billion and $296 billion per year.”
D.C. Tipped Wage Workers Fairness Amendment Act Compliance
November 3, 2022 • W. Baker Gerwig, IV
Category: Legal Updates
Passed in 2018, the District of Columbia’s Tipped Wage Workers Fairness Amendment Act’s (TWWFA) mandatory sexual harassment training provisions are now in effect. Employers with workers for whom an employer takes a tip credit must take several steps related to sexual harassment policies and training. Employers must ensure that they:
Rounding Time Entries – Just Don’t Do It
October 27, 2022 • Shirley A. Gauvin
Category: Legal Updates
On October 24, 2022, the Sixth District issued a decision in in Camp v. Home Depot, handing employees a major win in the wage and hour arena by holding that Home Depot’s practice of rounding hourly employees’ total daily worktime to the nearest quarter hour, rather than using the actual worktime recorded by Home Depot’s timekeeping system “Kronos.” The Court found the rounding resulted in the failure to pay employees for all time worked. Plaintiffs Camp and Correa filed a putative class action for unpaid wages and unfair competition, and Home Depot moved for summary judgment on the basis that the rounding policy was neutral on its face, neutral as applied, and lawful under See’s Candy Shops, Inc. v. Superior Court *(2012) 210 Cal.App.4th 889 (See’s). For the past ten years, *See’s has been cited in support of the rule that rounding is permissible if it “is neutral on its face and is used in such a manner that it will not result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate employees properly for all the time they have actually worked.” Granting summary judgment, the trial court reasoned that it could not disregard the binding appellate authority of See’s.