Lobby Day
Mariko Yoshihara, Esq.
Be sure to register by Friday, March 10th for this year’s lobby day. On Tuesday, March 14th CELA members will take to the halls of the state capitol, meeting with members of the legislature to discuss CELA’s top priorities, including family leave, gender pay equity, wage theft, and forced arbitration! This will be an exciting opportunity for CELA members to engage with their colleagues from around the state, learn about new labor and employment legislation, and discuss your practice and emerging issues with legislators and their staffs. For those who are new to CELA or lobby day, we will have a comprehensive pre-lobby day webinar to get you up to speed on the legislative process and the workers’ rights legislation we will be discussing in our meetings.
Full Day Lobby Day Schedule
(or meet us at lunch for a half-day)
7:30-8:30 Registration and Breakfast at the Holiday Inn Sacramento
8:40-9:30 Lobby Day Orientation Program
10:00-12:00 Lobbying Meetings with Legislators and Staff
12:00-2:00 Lunch at the Capitol
2:00-4:30 Lobbying Meetings with Legislators and Staff
4:30-6:30 Cocktail Reception with Friends and Allies at Mayahuel
For more information and to register, go to www.cela.org/lobbyday.
New Legislation
This last month, republicans and democrats introduced several bills threatening workers’ rights and labor code enforcement, including legislation to roll back PAGA, provide employers with new affirmative defenses, and limit overtime. Over the next few months, we will be working with our allies to try and defeat these bills and hopefully change the narrative around the enforcement of important labor protections. On the progressive front, legislation was also introduced to help protect immigrant workers during federal immigration enforcement raids, strengthen whistleblower protections against workers in the environmental sciences or a climate-change-related field, and prohibit retaliation against workers based on reproductive health care decisions. If you have experience or feedback on any of the bills listed below, please email mariko@cela.org. For a complete list of bills we are tracking in the new legislative session, please visit www.cela.org/legislation
AB 281 (Salas D) Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004: penalties.
Summary: The Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 authorizes an aggrieved employee who complies with specified notice and filing requirements to bring a civil action to recover specified civil penalties that would otherwise be assessed and collected by the Labor and Workforce Development Agency. The bill would provide that an aggrieved employee may be awarded civil penalties based only upon a violation by the employer actually suffered by that employee.
AB 442 (Frazier D) Employer liability: small business and microbusiness.
Summary: This bill would prohibit the Division of Occupational Safety and Health from commencing any enforcement action for any non-serious violation, as defined, against any employer where the employer is a small business or microbusiness, as defined, without first giving the employer written notice and providing the employer 30 days to correct the violation. The bill would authorize the division to assess a reasonable fee to cover its costs not to exceed $50.
AB 543 (Chen R) Employment: resident apartment manager wages.
Summary: Current law provides that an employer is not in violation of specified orders of the Industrial Welfare Commission if he or she charges, pursuant to a voluntary written agreement, a resident apartment manager up to 2/3 of the fair market rental value of the apartment supplied to the manager, if the rental value is not applied to satisfy the employer’s minimum wage obligation to the manager. This bill would extend the exemption from those orders of the Industrial Welfare Commission to an employer who does not charge the resident apartment manager any rent and, pursuant to a voluntary written agreement, applies up to 2/3 of the fair market rental value of the apartment to meet his or her minimum wage obligations to the manager.
AB 569 (Gonzalez Fletcher D) Discrimination: reproductive health.
Summary: This bill would prohibit an employer from taking any adverse employment action, as defined, against an employee based on the use of any drug, device, or medical service related to reproductive health by an employee or employee’s dependent or requiring an employee to sign a waiver or other document that purports to deny any employee the right to make his or her own reproductive health care decisions, including the use of a particular drug, device, or medical service.
AB 984 (Calderon D) Courts: frivolous actions or tactics.
Summary: Current law, until January 1, 2018, authorizes a trial court to order a party, the party’s attorney, or both, to pay the reasonable expenses, including attorney’s fees, incurred by another party as a result of bad-faith actions or tactics, as defined, that are frivolous or solely intended to cause unnecessary delay. Current law requires that any sanctions imposed pursuant to those provisions be imposed consistently with the standards, conditions, and procedures set forth in specified provisions relating to sanctions. This bill would extend the authorization of the trial court to order the payment of those reasonable expenses until January 1, 2019.
AB 1008 (McCarty D) Employment discrimination: prior criminal history.
Summary: This bill would provide it is an unlawful employment practice for an employer to include on any application for employment any question that seeks the disclosure of an applicant’s criminal history, to inquire into or consider the conviction history of an applicant until that applicant has received a conditional offer, and, when conducting a conviction history background check, to consider, distribute, or disseminate specified information related to prior criminal convictions, except as provided.
AB 1099 (Gonzalez Fletcher D) Compensation: gratuities.
Summary: This bill would require an employer that permits a patron to pay for services performed by an employee by debit or credit card to also accept a debit or credit card for payment of gratuity. The bill would require payment of a gratuity made by a patron using a credit card to be made to the employee not later than the next regular payday following the date the patron authorized the credit card payment. Because a violation of these provisions would be a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.
AB 1173 (Harper R) Employment: work hours: holiday season: overtime.
Summary: This bill would establish an overtime exemption for an employee-selected holiday season flexible work schedule. The exemption would allow during the holiday season, as defined, at the request of an individual nonexempt employee working in the retail industry, and upon employer approval, an employee-selected flexible work schedule providing for workdays up to 10 hours per day within a 40-hour workweek. The employer would be obligated to pay overtime based on the employee’s regular rate of pay, as prescribed, for all hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek or over 10 hours in a workday, whichever is greater.
AB 1174 (Harper R) Right to work: labor organizations.
Summary: This bill would, commencing January 1, 2018, prohibit a person from requiring an employee, as a condition of obtaining or continuing employment, to contribute financial support to a labor organization or financially support a charity or other organization sponsored by, or at the behest of, a labor organization. This bill would permit an employee or potential employee to seek injunctive relief or monetary damages, or both, for violations or threatened violations of these provisions. This bill would exempt specified employers and employees covered by federal law and would exempt circumstances that would be preempted by federal law from these provisions.
AB 1429 (Fong R) Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004.
Summary: The Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 authorizes an aggrieved employee to bring a civil action to recover specified civil penalties that would otherwise be assessed and collected by the Labor and Workforce Development Agency on behalf of the employee and other current or former employees for the violation of certain provisions affecting employees. This bill would limit the violations for which an aggrieved employee is authorized to bring a civil action under the act and would require the employee to follow specified procedures before bringing an action.
AB 1430 (Fong R) Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004.
Summary: Under the Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004, an employee is authorized to bring an action for an alleged violation after the agency notifies the employer and the aggrieved employee or representative that it does not intend to investigate the alleged violation, if the agency proceeds with an investigation and no citation is issued, or the agency fails to provide notification as prescribed. This bill would revise those procedural provisions to require the agency, after receiving notification of an alleged violation, to investigate the alleged violation and either issue a citation or determine if there is a reasonable basis for a civil action.
SB 51 (Jackson D) Professional licensees: environmental sciences and climate change: whistleblower and data protection.
Summary: This bill would require the Secretary for Environmental Protection to ensure that all scientific information and other data otherwise in the public domain is protected against censorship or destruction by the federal government. This bill would include findings and declarations related to the measure, including that the purpose of these provisions is, to the maximum extent feasible under state law, to ensure those persons may report improper governmental activity and to continue to make scientific and other information open to the public without fear of losing their professional licenses or credentials.
SB 482 (Stone R) Domestic work employees.
Summary: This bill would authorize a domestic work employee who is a live-in employee or who is required to be on duty for 24 or more consecutive hours to enter into a written agreement with the domestic work employer to exclude from hours worked a bona fide regularly scheduled sleeping period of not more than 8 hours for uninterrupted sleep, if specified conditions are met. If the sleeping period is interrupted by an emergency, only time spent working during the emergency would constitute hours worked. Absent a written agreement, the 8 hours available for sleep would constitute hours worked.
SB 484 (Roth D) Deposition reporting services: unlawful business practices.
Summary: This bill would provide that it is unlawful for a person or entity that employs one or more deposition officers for the purpose of transcribing deposition testimony to give, pursuant to any agreement or understanding, oral or otherwise, any referral fee, kickback, bribe, rebate, or thing of value to an attorney or law firm, or to an employee or independent contractor of an attorney or law firm, as compensation or inducement in connection with the services to be provided by the deposition officer, as specified.
SB 524 (Vidak R) Employment: violations: good faith defense.
Summary: Under current law, an employer may face administrative sanctions, civil fines and penalties, and criminal penalties for violations of employment statutes or regulations. This bill would permit a person to raise as an affirmative defense that, at the time of an alleged violation of statute or regulation in a judicial or administrative proceeding, the person was acting in good faith, had sought, relied upon, and conformed with a published opinion letter or enforcement policy of the division, and had provided true and correct information to the division in seeking the opinion letter or enforcement policy.
SB 744 (Hueso D) Employee Right to Privacy.
Summary: This bill would state the intent of the Legislature to enact legislation amending the Labor Code to establish the “Employee Right to Privacy.”