Labor & Employment Law Blog

In California, employers are required to have workplace postings regarding employee rights and responsibilities under the Fair Employment and Housing Act which are produced by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (“DFEH”). California recently updated three of these mandatory DFEH posters as a result of revisions to state law that went into effect on January 1, 2013.

Specifically, the DFEH ...

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.

Complaints alleging violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (“FEHA”) will be handled differently by the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (“DFEH”) beginning January 1, 2013.

On August 31, 2012, AALRR attorneys Irma Rodriguez Moisa and Sharon J. Ormond obtained a unanimous jury defense verdict in favor of The Regents of the University of California after a 14-day jury trial.  The Plaintiff, James Friedman, was laid off from his position at the University of California at Los Angeles in April 2010 after a reorganization of his unit resulted in his position being eliminated.  He ...

Many employers require employees to acknowledge in writing the employee’s receipt of a notice or memorandum of discipline when workplace discipline is imposed. In Paratransit, Inc. v. Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board, the California Court of Appeal held: (1) it is lawful for an employer to require an employee to sign such an acknowledgement, (2) an employee’s refusal to sign such an acknowledgement form when lawfully presented to the employee is “misconduct” as that term is defined in Unemployment Insurance Code section 1256, and (3) such “misconduct” is grounds for denying unemployment insurance benefits to an employee who is terminated for refusing to sign a discipline acknowledgement form lawfully presented to him or to her.

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.”

Recently, the United States Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to implement Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) amendments that, among other things, broaden the military family leave provisions and incorporate new eligibility requirements for airline flight crew employees. Comments to the proposed rule are due 60 days after its publication in the Federal Register.

Many employers understandably seek to regulate employees' use of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, to communicate about the employer or about workplace issues. As we previously reported here, for example, the National Labor Relations Board has recently determined in several cases that the employer violated the National Labor Relations Act either by adopting policies the NLRB considers to be an ...

As we previously reported here, a report issued by the Judicial Council of California, Administrative Office of the Courts, Office of Court Research, shows that employment cases were the most frequently filed class actions, representing 29.3% of the class actions filed and that over half of the employment cases filed alleged violations of Labor Code provisions governing payment of wages, rest and meal periods, and related claims. This is consistent with our experience representing numerous employers against such class action lawsuits.