As we previously reported, the California Legislature amended several statutes regulating employer workplace safety policies, including existing injury and illness prevention plans, to also include a new, separate requirement for a “Workplace Violence Prevention Plan.” With few exceptions, California employers must have such a plan in place by July 1, 2024. 

Cal/OSHA has promulgated an initial set of standards and a model template for such a plan, which can be found here. These standards must be submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board (OSHSB) by no ...

Q: I was appointed receiver over a manufacturing facility. I operated it for a short time and then obtained court authority to sell it. I netted $1.4 million from the sale. The landlord agreed I could pay it the rent I owed from the net proceeds and is owed $600,000. All good, except I just learned the IRS is owed $1 million. I know receivers can incur personal liability if they pay creditors ahead of owed taxes. Do I have to pay the IRS ahead of my cooperative landlord?

A: No. What is known as the Federal Priority Act (31 U.S.C. §3713) mandates that representatives of insolvent estates, including ...

Despite its best efforts, the California Legislature has been unable to substantially curtail the popularity of employment arbitrations in California.  The hostility to employment arbitration remains evident, however, among the California courts.  This is illustrated by the recent decision of the California Court of Appeals in Vazquez v. SaniSure, Inc.

In Vazquez, an employee was initially hired by an employer for almost two years between 2019 and 2021.  During this period of employment, she was required to sign a binding arbitration agreement. The agreement provided that ...

The facts are frequently the same. A company that has retained the services of a vendor receives an authentic-looking email from the vendor’s CFO which advises that the vendor has changed its bank account or method of payment. Believing that the email is genuine, the company wires funds as directed by the vendor’s CFO. It then turns out that a hacker has impersonated the vendor’s CFO and the company’s payment has gone to an overseas account controlled by the vendor.

In due course, the vendor sues the company demanding payment. The question then arises whether the company’s ...

Despite the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issuing a revised version of Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, last year, many employers continue to use an outdated version of the form. The current version of Form I-9 can be found here.  

Employers must use the revised Form I-9 for all new hires, reverifications and rehires. The changes made to the I-9 form include the reduction of length to one page, more clear instructions, and guidance on acceptable receipts and the auto-extension of some documents, as found on the Lists of Acceptable Documents.

An employer that used an ...

Most private employers with at least 100 employees and federal contractors with at least 50 employees are aware of federal job pay data reporting requirements. Specifically, these employers are required to provide to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) an EEO-1 Component 1 report that provides employee data from the prior year by employee job category, as well as sex and race/ethnicity. However, these employers may not be aware that California has additional pay data annual reporting requirements which exceed those set forth in the EEO-1 Component 1 ...

On March 15, 2024, the newly appointed Fast Food Council (the “Council”) held its first public meeting in the State Building in Oakland.

The Council was created as part of Assembly Bill 1228, the FAST Recovery Act. The Council has the power to establish minimum standards for fast food workers, including standards for working hours, working conditions, and health and safety.

The Council is comprised of eleven members, nine voting members and two non-voting members. The members are: Nick Hardeman (Chair), Michaela Mendelsohn, Anneisha Williams, Joe Johal, SG Ellison, Richard ...

On March 25, 2024, Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill 610 into law. AB 610 will exempt some businesses from needing to comply with the Fast Recovery Act. The Fast Recovery Act includes an increase in minimum wage for certain fast food establishment employees which will go into effect next week on April 1, 2024.

More specifically, the FAST Recovery Act sets the minimum wage for fast food workers in chains with more than 60 locations across the country at $20/hour. Approximately 500,000 workers will be affected by the wage increase. In addition to the wage increase, the FAST Recovery Act ...

On March 18, 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States (the “Supreme Court”) denied a petition for writ of certiorari brought by McDonald’s USA, LLC (“McDonald’s”).

McDonald’s had asked the Supreme Court to review a decision by the 7^th Circuit Court of Appeals to allow a class action lawsuit claiming that it violated antitrust laws by prohibiting franchises from poaching employees from other McDonald’s restaurants. The lawsuit alleged that the no-poach provisions artificially reduced workers’ wages by limiting their ability to move from one franchise to ...

On February 22, 2024, a panel of judges for the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an unpublished opinion upholding enforcement of a National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) order holding that a restaurant, Grill Concepts Services, Inc. (“Grill Concepts”) violated the National Labor Relations Act by refusing to bargain in good faith with the UNITE HERE Local 11 union. The panel granted NLRB’s petition for enforcement and denied Grill Concepts’ petition for review.

NLRB alleged that Grill Concepts engaged in a course of bad faith conduct between ...