Labor & Employment Law Blog

Under the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), employers will be required to provide all employees with notices regarding rights concerning the insurance Marketplaces on or by October 1, 2013.

On September 25, 2013, California Governor Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 10 (“AB10”), which will increase the state’s minimum wage to $9.00 per hour by July 1, 2014, and $10.00 per hour by January 1, 2016.

With the close of the 2013 legislative session on September 12, 2013, the California Legislature passed Assembly Bill 10 (“AB 10”), which will increase the state’s minimum wage to $9.00 per hour by July 1, 2014, and $10.00 per hour by January 1, 2016.  AB 10 now awaits signature by Governor Jerry Brown by October 13, 2013.  The Governor has promised he will sign the bill.

The current California minimum wage is ...

A California Court of Appeal struck down yet another employment arbitration provision, based on lack of notice to the employees, and an attempted modification to the agreement after the plaintiffs’ claims accrued and the plaintiffs’ complaint was filed.

In Avery v. Integrated Healthcare Holdings, Inc., six employees sued Integrated Healthcare Holdings, Inc., an operator of four hospitals in ...

On July 2, 2013, the United States Treasury Department announced that implementation and enforcement of the shared responsibility mandate("employer mandate") under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Act”) will be delayed by one year. Until today, employers were preparing to be in compliance with the Act starting on January 1, 2014. As a result of today’s announcement, employer ...

On February 27, 2013, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) published interim final regulations regarding employee whistleblowing complaints under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA” a.k.a. the healthcare reform act). The regulations allow employees to file complaints with the Occupational Safety & Health Administration (“OSHA”) against their employers (and health ...

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (“USCIS”) introduced a new Form I-9 today, March 8, 2013, for immediate use.  The new form, which is identified with “version (Rev. 03/08/13)” in the lower left corner, features several new revisions:

• Expands the form from one page to two pages.  The first page is to be completed by the employee, the second by the employer.
• Asks for employee e-mail ...

In Carr Finishing Specialist, Inc., 358 NLRB No. 165 (9/28/12), the NLRB ruled that a contractor that was signatory to an Collective Bargaining Agreement with the Iron Workers Union remained bound to a newly-negotiated agreement when the company did not timely revoke the authority it gave to multiemployer bargaining association to negotiate on its behalf.

In the past several months, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has issued a series of decisions that could affect everyday policies that union and non-union employers maintain in the workplace. The decisions are summarized below.

As employers increasingly consider adopting mandatory arbitration agreements for employment disputes following last year’s Supreme Court decision upholding class arbitration waivers in Concepcion, there is an increasing need to review old agreements and policies contained in Employee Handbooks to ensure that they do not render such attempts futile. Nowhere was this demonstrated more clearly than in the recent decision in Sparks v. Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services, issued on July 31, 2012, in which the court denied the enforcement of a policy requiring arbitration because of its inclusion in a handbook which contained general language permitting an employer to change its terms unilaterally and stating that it was “not an agreement.”