Labor & Employment Law Blog

On April 10, 2019, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a detailed breakdown of workplace discrimination charges the agency received in fiscal year 2018, which ended on September 30, 2018.  The enforcement and litigation statistics are available on the EEOC website.

Representative claims brought under the California Private Attorney General Act of 2004 (“PAGA”), Labor Code § 2699 et seq., will remain before the court for the foreseeable future. In a recent case, Correia v. NB Baker Electric, Inc., the California Court of Appeal again confirmed that employers cannot compel employees to arbitrate their PAGA claims, no matter the existence of an arbitration agreement, without some evidence that the State of California consented to the employee’s waiver of the right to bring the PAGA claim in court.

On Thursday March 7, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) published its new overtime pay regulation, which raises the minimum salary threshold to $35,308 per year for an employee to qualify for the Fair Labor Standards Act’s (“FLSA”) “executive, administrative, or professional” exemption from federal overtime and minimum wage laws (commonly referred to as the “white collar exemption”).  The FLSA exempts from both minimum wage and overtime requirements “any employee employed in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity.”  29 U.S.C. § 213(a)(1).  When enacting the FLSA, Congress did not define the terms “bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity” and instead delegated the power to define and delimit these terms to the Secretary of Labor through regulations, which the Secretary of Labor delegated to the DOL.

In a case of first impression, the California Supreme Court recently decided that an employee cannot sue a payroll company for failing to include the legally required information on the employee’s earnings statements.  The Court held that because a payroll company’s obligations are solely to the employer, an employee cannot claim that they are a third‑party beneficiary of the employer’s contract for payroll services, and cannot maintain a claim for breach of that contract against the payroll provider. (Goonewardene v. ADP, No. S238941, February 7, 2019)

California announced the debut of its CalSavers program this month, designed to help employees save for retirement when their employers are not able to offer participation in another retirement program.

In the recent case of Huerta v. Kava Holdings, Inc., 2018 WL 5999639 (Cal. Ct. App. Nov. 14, 2018), the California Court of Appeal held that a prevailing employer that made a section 998 settlement offer to the plaintiff in an action brought under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”) was not entitled to costs and expert witness fees incurred after the plaintiff’s rejection of the offer.

On November 6, 2018, a majority of Californians voted “Yes” on Proposition 11, which will allow private sector emergency ambulance employees, specifically, emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and paramedics, to remain “on-call” during their meal periods and rest periods so they can respond in case of an emergency. 

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. 

In a decision issued by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on September 10, 2018, the court rejected a challenge based on federal preemption grounds to the California Labor Commissioner’s use of the Borello standard for determining independent contractor status. The challenge was made based on the motor carrier provisions of the Federal Aviation and Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (“FAAAA”), 49 U.S.C. § 14501, et seq., which prohibit states from enacting or enforcing laws or regulations that relate to “a price, route or service of a motor carrier . . . with respect to the transportation of property.”