Labor & Employment Law Blog

The courts in Los Angeles are creating controversy over attorneys’ fees awards—a tale in three parts.

In Pollock v. Kelso, 107 Cal. App. 5^th 1190 (2025), Pollock sued for sexual harassment and racial discrimination. The trial court granted summary judgment, and the court of appeal affirmed. The California Supreme court reversed, and on remand, the Court of Appeal awarded appellate costs to Pollock.  Pollock moved for $526,475.63 in attorneys’ fees, and the court awarded $493,577.10.  Defendant appealed.  The summary judgment motion was reversed, and a trial was set.  The parties settled the case except for the appeal on the attorneys’ fees, and filed a stipulation with the court stating, “The court DISMISSES this entire action with prejudice as to all parties and all causes of action.”

On February 8, 2021, the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision clarifying the circumstances under which a per diem benefit must be included in the regular rate of pay for overtime purposes under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).  The court held that since per diem benefits functioned as compensation for work rather than as reimbursement for expenses incurred by traveling healthcare clinicians, they were improperly excluded from the clinicians’ regular rates of pay for purposes of calculating overtime pay under federal law. Clarke v. AMN Servs., LLC (9th Cir., 2021) No. 19-55784, 2021 WL 419473.

With the passage of AB 2605 earlier this year, employees covered by specific Collective Bargaining Agreements (“CBAs”) who hold a “safety-sensitive” position at a petroleum facility are now exempt from certain California rest and recovery period requirements. This bill is a legislative response to the highly criticized Augustus v. ABM Security Services, Inc. 2 Cal.5th 257 (December 22, 2016) decision. In Augustus, ABM Security required its security guards to keep their radios on during their rest and recovery periods in case of an emergency. The plaintiffs argued that this “on-call policy” required them to not be relieved of all duty, and therefore unlawfully denied their right to a rest period. The California Supreme Court agreed, holding that being “on call” requires employees to remain “at the ready” and therefore unable to fully engage in personal activities.

The DFEH recently released its Sample Equal Opportunity Policy. The Sample Policy is available in PDF and Word form on the DFEH’s employment resources page at https://www.dfeh.ca.gov/resources/posters-and-brochures-and-fact-sheets/poster-and-brochure-tab-list/?target=employment.

On June 25, 2018, a California court of appeal offered employers who use rounding systems to calculate employee payroll a reassuring ruling, approving a policy that rounded employee’s time to the nearest quarter hour. In AHMC Healthcare, Inc. v Superior Court (2018) No. B285655, the issue arose out of AHMC Healthcare’s use of a payroll system that automatically rounded employee hours up or down to the nearest quarter hour prior to calculating wages and issuing paychecks (instead of using the employee’s exact check-in and check-out times). Emilio Letona and Jacquelyn Abeyta, both employees of AHMC Healthcare, brought a class-action suit against AHMC Healthcare, Inc. for failure to pay wages and failure to furnish timely and accurate wage statements. The plaintiffs claimed this rounding system was in direct violation of the Labor Code, and presented evidence of time records from San Gabriel Valley Medical Center L.P. (where Letona was employed) and AHMC Anaheim Regional Medical Center L.P. (where Abeyta was employed).

The following cities and counties in California are scheduled to increase minimum wage rates on July 1, 2018.

Recently, both the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and California Franchise Tax Board (FTB) have issued news releases encouraging taxpayers to plan ahead and to withhold the correct amount of taxes from their paychecks in 2018 to account for recent changes in federal tax law.

On September 15, 2017, the 2017 California legislative session ended, with several employment-related bills being sent to the Governor’s desk.  The Governor has until October 15, 2017 to sign or veto bills passed by the Legislature.  Below is a quick summary of key bills that may be signed and become effective in the upcoming year:

The minimum wage rates in 10 localities in California are set to increase effective July 1, 2017.  The increases are as follows:

• Emeryville: $14.00 per hour (for employers with 55 or fewer employees); $15.20 per hour (for employers with 56 or more employees).
• Milpitas: $11.00 per hour
• San Francisco: $14.00 per hour
• San Jose: $12.00 per hour
• San Leandro: $12.00 per hour
• Los Angeles (City): $12.00 per hour (for ...

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 ...