By year end of 2019, California hotel and motel employers must train all of their employees about human trafficking – to raise awareness, teach employees how to spot victims, and provide guidance on what to do to help. As we pointed out in our January 2019 blog about…
On July 3, 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 188 — also known as the CROWN Act — and made California the first state in the country to outlaw discrimination based on “natural hair,” including afros, braids, twists, and locks. CROWN stands for Creating a Respectful and…
Last year was a busy legislative year in California. The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements in particular spawned a host of new employment laws that took effect on January 1st. If you haven’t done so already, you should review your employee handbook and personnel policies to make sure that you are…
I came across an interesting article today in the Harvard Business Review about employee terminations. The author, who is a digital media executive and Adjunct Professor of Management at Columbia University, argues that “transparent separation” is a more humane approach to employee termination that is “highly underused given…
On July 18, 2018, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 2282. This new law, which goes into effect on January 1, 2019, clarifies employees’ rights, and employers’ obligations, under the state’s existing “Fair Pay Act.” Under California’s existing Fair Pay Act, California employers were (and still are) prohibited from…
A recent article by Marcel Schwantes in Inc. Magazine summarizes new research on the key traits of bad bosses. Guess what key trait makes for the worst type of boss? Absentee Leadership Absentee leadership is harder to detect and does not fall into one of the classic leadership patterns…
As we predicted in a recent blog post which you can find here, federal ICE agents are targeting California employers and making California workplaces battle zones for federal immigration raids. According to today’s story in the New York Times, employers throughout California are reporting more surprise ICE audits. This…
As I blogged about here and here, California and San Francisco recently enacted new laws prohibiting employers from asking applicants about their prior “salary history.” California currently joins Delaware and New York City as the only other jurisdictions that currently prohibit all employers from asking about salary history…
Many Californians celebrated the arrival of 2018 standing for hours in long lines at their local pot dispensary. That’s because the 2016 law legalizing recreational marijuana in California — known as Proposition 64 or the Adult Use of Marijuana Act (AUMA) — officially became effective on January 1,…
California law has not (yet) recognized weight as a protected category along with race, gender, gender identity, religion, sexual orientation, medical condition, and many others. However, more than 25 years ago, the California Supreme Court held that an overweight employee could qualify as a “disabled” under California’s Fair…