Labor & Employment Law Blog

On October 22, 2018, the California Court of Appeal followed the California Supreme Court’s guidance in Dynamex, and differentiated between a taxi driver’s Industrial Welfare Committee Wage Order claims, and non-Wage Order claims. (Garcia v. Border Transportation Group, LLC (D072521, Court of Appeal, 4th App. Dist. Div. 1).  In line with the Supreme Court’s decision, the Court of Appeal applied the ABC independent contractor test to Wage Order claims, while leaving other wage and hour claims for evaluation under the multi-factor Borello test.  The Wage Orders regulate basic working conditions for California employees, including minimum wage, meal breaks, and rest periods.

California’s Fourth Appellate District, Division One, recently upheld a trial court judgment in favor of Certified Tire and Service Centers (“Certified Tire”), finding the company’s compensation system for its tire technicians complied with California’s wage and hour laws.

On September 25, 2018, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that the claims of potentially hundreds of thousands of Uber drivers for misclassification as independent contractors cannot proceed as a class action.  (O’Connor v. Uber Technologies, Ninth Circuit Case No. 16-15595.)  In this case, the drivers signed arbitration agreements containing class action waivers, which the Ninth Circuit initially refused to enforce based on the state of the law at the time.  However, in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Epic Systems (Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis, ––– U.S. ––––, 138 S.Ct. 1612, 200 L.Ed.2d 889 (2018)) which issued in June, the appellate court held that the waivers must be enforced and that the case cannot proceed as a class action.  The court ordered that the arbitration agreements be enforced so that the arbitrations proceed on an individual basis.