Insight & Commentary on California Workplace Law Issues & Developments
In June, the City of Los Angeles passed an ordinance designed to increase safety protections for hotel workers in hotels, limit daily workload, and raise hotel worker wages.
The new ordinance took effect on August 12, 2022.
Under the ordinance, a hotel employer must place on the back of the entrance door to each…
California’s Healthy Workplace, Healthy Family Act (the Act) requiring most employers to provide paid sick leave for covered employees went into effect in 2015. However, in 2017 and 2021, two separate California federal district courts concluded that the Act was not applicable to rail workers due to preemption by the federal Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act…
California voters almost had the opportunity to vote on an $18 minimum wage in November 2022. The State has a unique administrative process by which California citizens can propose laws and constitutional amendments without the support of the state government.
The $18 an hour proposition called, “The Living Wage Act of 2022,” was intended to…
In March 2022, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) dropped universal indoor masking, though masking was still required in certain places. By April 2022, most counties had also ceased universal indoor masking requirements. However, recently, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH) stated if the uptick in cases and hospitalizations continued, then…
At the end of 2021, the California Secretary of State approved a proposition to reform California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) by collecting signatures for the November 2022 ballot. The Secretary of State recently announced that the California Fair Pay and Employer Accountability Act has qualified for the 2024 ballot, with nearly 1 million signatures…
In 2020, California passed Assembly Bill (AB) 1731, which created an alternative process for employers to submit and be approved for work-sharing plan programs. Previously some employees would be eligible for unemployment benefits if they were working less than their usual weekly hours and their employer was participating in a work-sharing plan that met…
In early June 2022, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) issued an order revising the definition of “close contact.” Under the CDPH order, close contact was defined as “someone sharing the same indoor airspace (e.g. home, clinic waiting room, airplane, etc.) for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period.”…
In March 2022, San Francisco amended its Family Friendly Workplace Ordinance. The amendments which took effect at the start of July 2022, made the following changes:
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In June, San Francisco voters passed Proposition G, a new Public Health Emergency Leave Ordinance. The ordinance requires private employers to provide paid leave to employees for “public health emergencies.” The leave ordinance will be in addition to employer-provided paid leave, such as paid sick leave.
The leave ordinance will become operative on October …
California’s Paid Family Leave (PFL) program, which is administered by the Employment Development Department (EDD) provides eligible employees with up to 8 weeks of wage replacement benefits when an employee is off work for certain qualifying reasons.
Businesses with employees using PFL may have increased costs such as cross-training existing staff and hiring and…
