San Francisco’s emergency COVID-Related Hazard Pay Ordinance (the “Ordinance”), which became effective on March 22, 2021, required certain large San Francisco employers (primarily grocery stores and drug stores with 500 or more employees worldwide) to pay employees an additional $5.00 per hour in hazard pay on top of their regular hourly wage, up to a… Read More
HR & Employment Law Blog
Post-Pandemic Benefits: Employers Are Changing Their Benefits Priorities
The pandemic has changed everyone’s lives in so many ways. We likely will not realize all of those changes for a long time. Work life has changed for nearly everyone during this time, and our relationships to work, and how they relate to our personal lives, have been put under the microscope. In a recent… Read More
To (Require) Vaccines or Not To (Require) Vaccines: That Is the Question
California is preparing to reopen, and employers are readying to welcome their workforce back to offices. One of the biggest questions on the minds of many business owners is how to bring their workforce back together in “real time” while still maintaining the safety of all employees, as they are fundamentally obligated under Cal-OSHA to… Read More
Supplemental Paid Sick Leave is Back in California – What Employers Need to Know
In September 2020, Governor Newsom signed AB 1867 into law, which created Supplemental Paid Sick Leave (“SPSL”) rights for millions of California employees who were not eligible for such leave under the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act (“FFCRA”). We blogged about AB 1867 here. Since AB 1867 expired on December 31, 2020, as did… Read More
Close Only Counts in Horseshoes and Hand Grenades – Not Meal Periods
In the most significant meal periods decision in almost ten years, the California Supreme Court on February 25, 2021 decided Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC. While the Court in Donohue made clear that as long as meal periods are provided, employers do not have to “police” employees and force them to take meal periods, the… Read More
How the New “American Rescue Plan Act” Impacts Employers and Employees
Now that President Biden has signed the American Rescue Plan Act (“ARPA”) into law, we’ve had the chance to review the massive legislation. And we’ve discovered some little-known provisions in the law that directly impact employers and employees. Here’s a quick summary of those provisions: Incentives for Employers to Offer Paid Sick Leave As we… Read More
Cal-OSHA Provides Additional Guidance for Employers Regarding COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standards
On November 30, 2020, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal-OSHA) adopted a set of COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standards (“ETS”), which became effective immediately. The ETS require employers to take various actions to protect their workplaces from COVID-19. You can read our previous blog post about the ETS here. On December 1, 2020, Cal-OSHA… Read More
The 5 Key Ingredients of a Successful Team, According to Google
Back in 2012, Google (in classic Google fashion) sought to identify a formula for creating the most successful workplace team. They called this experiment “Project Aristotle,” named after the philosopher credited with the remarkable notion that “there exists a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.” In his Inc. article, which you… Read More
California Supreme Court Rules That Dynamex Applies Retroactively
California employers face even more liability now for misclassifying workers as “independent contractors.” That’s because the California Supreme Court recently ruled in Vasquez v. Jan-Pro Franchising, Inc. that the test for determining whether a worker qualifies as an employee or independent contractor – known as the “ABC Test” and announced in the Court’s 2018 decision… Read More
Better Together: Mentor Matchups as a Buffer for Employee Retention
As an employer, there is nothing more disheartening than finding the “perfect employee,” and then losing that employee and having to start the hiring process back at square one. Recently, Forbes contributor Robert Sher delved into this issue and put forth a solution: mentorship. By pairing new hires up with experienced colleagues – not just… Read More
