The California Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) was established to regulate wages, hours, and working conditions in California. Importantly, the IWC adopted “wage orders,” which establish specific rules for various industries. California has not funded the IWC since 2004, and it has not been in operation. This is likely to change.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed
On June 3, 2021, California’s Occupational Safety & Healthy Standards Board approved significant revisions to the initial COVID-19-related Emergency Temporary Standards (ETS) originally implemented on November 19, 2020 (see Perkins Coie’s previous blog post here). The amended regulations can be found here and will likely become effective on June 15, 2021, pending review by
California law generally requires that employers provide nonexempt employees an uninterrupted, nonworking 30-minute meal period to begin before the end of the fifth hour of work. In a case of first impression, Donahue v. AMN Services, LLC, ___ P.3d ___, 2021 WL 728871 (Cal. 2021) analyzed whether an otherwise-permissible time-rounding system could be used
In Bernstein v. Virgin America, Inc., ___ F.3d ___, 2021 WL 686281 (9th Cir. 2021), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the application of California wage-and-hour laws to employees who worked both within and outside of the state.
Prior case law established that California’s wage-and-hour laws apply to non-California residents
On January 14, 2021, the California Supreme Court decided Vazquez v. Jan-Pro Franchising International, Inc. The decision holds that the ABC test used to determine independent contractor versus employee status for purposes of California’s Wage Orders, announced in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court (2018) 4 Cal.5th 903, applies retroactively. Read the full update
The City and County of San Francisco recently enacted an emergency Ordinance, the text of which is available here, effective September 11, 2020, which prevents all employers from taking adverse employment actions (e.g., firing, threatening to fire, disciplining, or in any manner discriminating) against employees and independent contractors (collectively “Workers,” as defined in the
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2020-5 (Bulletin) in late August 2020 that addressed the subject of an employer’s obligation under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) to exercise reasonable diligence in tracking the hours of work for non-exempt employees working remotely. The