Last year, California employers faced a swell of new city and county labor laws that increased employers’ local minimum wage obligations. Several of these local ordinances included incremental increases that went into effect over time, including many increases that are effective as of July 1, 2018. In addition to meeting the state’s minimum wage requirements ($10.50/hour for employers with 25 or fewer employees, and $11 ...
Walking the tight rope between making strides for women’s rights and being too strident So, the Trump-Kim Summit has successfully concluded in Singapore, with the Leader of the Free World shaking hands with the Supreme Leader of one of its most coldblooded dictatorships. Looking at these two scions of privilege, it is hard not to be struck by how much they have in common, united not just by their comically bad hair, but also by their low regard for women ...
Download the June 2018 edition of the Haynes and Boone OSHA Newsletter PDF. No Time Limit on Look Back Period for Repeat Citations InTriumph Constr. Corp. v. Sec’y of Labor, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a look back period for a repeat violation beyond the Commission’s “general” policy of three years to determine a repeat violation. InTriumph, an employee was injured in a cave-in at an excavation site ...
In a significant decision for all public agencies, yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the First Amendment prohibits public employees from being compelled to pay what are known as “agency fees” when they choose not to join their union. Janus v. AFSCME, No. 16-1466 (June 27, 2018). In so holding, the Court overruled its 1977 decision in Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, 431 U.S. 209 (1977) ...
Employers may continue to rely on rounding systems that are neutral in policy and in practice. On June 25, 2018, the California Court of Appeal issued its decision in AHMC Healthcare, Inc. v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County (Letona), finding legal an employer's use of a payroll system that automatically rounds employee time up or down to the nearest quarter hour ...
Ferdose al-Taie, Dallas-based senior counsel in Dykema’s Commercial Litigation group, authored the article “Anonymous Whistleblowers Make Millions for Reporting Their Own Companies to Federal Regulators,” forFOCUS, the quarterly newsletter of the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC) South Central Texas Chapter. In the article, al-Taie shines a light on the ins and outs of Dodd-Frank Whistleblower awards and who is eligible for consideration ...
InLagos v. United States, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling that limits the ability of corporate victims of fraud to seek reimbursement of legal fees for internal investigations. The case began when GE Capital discovered that Sergio Lagos falsified numerous invoices for his company, which he used as collateral to obtain tens of millions of dollars in loans from GE Capital ...
On June 21, in its much-anticipated decision inLucia v. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the SEC’s Administrative Law Judges (“ALJs”) are officers under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. The decision requires that, moving forward, SEC ALJs be constitutionally appointed rather than hired like other employees ...
This week, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued final rules to expand access to “Association Health Plans” for small businesses that are unaffiliated, but are in the same line of business or geographic area. An “Association Health Plan” or “AHP” is a group health plan adopted by members of an employer group or association to provide health coverage for their employees ...
In the Loop: With the Hanson Bridgett Government Group Many of us have had to request reimbursement from our company for an expense, which can be a pretty complicated process. For members of a legislative body, these rules can be even more specific. We'll think about Buddy, who sits on city council. Not long ago, the City gave Buddy a city-owned tablet to allow him to do his job remotely ...
Local Minimum Wage Increases Several California cities and counties have passed their own minimum wage ordinances with a more aggressive schedule of minimum wage increases. Local minimum wage increases that go into effect on July 1, 2018 include the following: Locality Minimum Wage Eff. 7/1/18 Belmont* $12.50 Emeryville Small business (55 or fewer employees): $15.00 Large business (56 or more employees): $15.69
On June 6, 2018, the NLRB General Counsel ("GC") issued a memorandum (GC 18-04) to all Regional Offices directing them to recognize certain types of workplace rules as generally lawful. This guidance should provide employers with greater assurance and clarity regarding acceptable workplace rules under the National Labor Relations Act ("NLRA") ...
On June 1, 2018, the Los Angeles County Superior Court granted a Defendant’s Motion to Compel Individual Arbitrations of the two Plaintiffs’ wage claims, dismissed the class claims and stayed the action with regard to the remaining Private Attorney Generals Act (PAGA) claim. The Court, in Navarrete v. Louis Vuitton, Case No ...
The Corps Struggles to Balance Competing Constitutional and Statutory Duties Federal agencies must often balance competing policy concerns and legal requirements. This process may be difficult and fraught with intense public feedback, and frequently results in litigation. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) has found itself in the hot seat over how it manages the nation’s rivers, pitting its obligations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) against private property rights ...
In a unanimous decision, the California Supreme Court recently addressed the standard to determine whether a worker is an independent contractor or an employee in wage and hour disputes under California’s Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) wage orders. In Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v ...
Last week I attended a student expulsion hearing and it reminded me that now might be a good time to provide some tips to county boards of education on these hearings. As we all know,W. Va. Code 18A-5-1a andState Policy 4373 require that a student be afforded a hearing before the county board of education prior to being expelled. Specifically,W. Va ...
As we discussed in our Mind the Gap webinar, many states and municipalities have enacted laws that prohibit employers from using previous pay to justify unequal pay between men and women or between members of different protected classes (race, color, religion, national origin, and gender) ...
On April 19, 2018, the Ohio Supreme Court determined in Bureau of Workers’ Compensation v. Verlinger (2018-Ohio-1481) that the provisions of Ohio Revised Code § 4123.931 (the subrogation statute) applied to third-party lawsuits prior to the actual establishment of the workers’ compensation claim ...
A New Development on the Subject (Update as of June 15th) Click Here to Read » A flurry of rulings during the last two weeks of May has generated enormous confusion regarding the status of California's two-year-old End of Life Option Act ("EOLOA"), the law that allows a terminally ill adult with a six-month prognosis to obtain aid-in-dying drugs from a physician, subject to numerous safeguards ...
The first upscale exploration of oil and gas in Montenegro started in 1914, when King Nikola Petrovic approved the National Assembly's decision for oil exploration around Lake Skadar. The first well in the area of Crmnica dates back to 1922 - although it produced nothing of significance. In later researches of the Montenegrin offshore, the existence of geological structures with the potential for hiding hydrocarbon deposits was confirmed ...
The California Legislature is considering legislation that would, if enacted, prohibit public agencies that form a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) from contracting out of liability for the JPA's pension obligations. Backed by CalPERS, AB 1912 was introduced early this year partly in response to drastic CalPERS pension cuts for former employees of LA Works, a dissolved job-training JPA ...
California employers defending against wage and hour lawsuits also face derivative claims for "inaccurate" wage statements, in addition to claims for the underlying alleged wage violations ...
In a landmark victory for employers, the Supreme Court of the United States held that agreements requiring employees to arbitrate claims on an individual basis are enforceable. The case, Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis,1 consolidated three different cases on appeal from the Fifth Circuit, Seventh Circuit and Ninth Circuit ...
In a landmark victory for employers, the Supreme Court of the United States held that agreements requiring employees to arbitrate claims on an individual basis are enforceable. The case,Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis,1consolidated three different cases on appeal from the Fifth Circuit, Seventh Circuit and Ninth Circuit ...
