The Labor and Employment Group at Weintraub Tobin is pleased to offer this very informative training session that will help business owners, human resource professionals, and managers to both comply with legal record keeping requirements and also prepare and maintain effective defensive documentation.
Program Highlights:
Summary of Program
The Labor and Employment Group at Weintraub Tobin is pleased to offer this informative seminar that will discuss recent cases to help business owners, human resource professionals, and managers avoid liability and effectively hire employees as well as carry out disciplines and terminations.
Program Highlights
On August 31st, the California Legislature passed a new bill (AB 465) to ensure that waivers of employment rights and procedures, often through arbitration agreements, are made voluntarily and not as a condition of obtaining or keeping employment. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported, the number of companies using arbitration agreements in the workplace
On August 7, 2015, the California Labor Commissioner issued its first opinion letter on one discrete issue under the California Health Workplaces Healthy Families Act which requires employers to provide paid sick leave to employees. The question posed to the Labor Commissioner was this:
If an employee currently works a regular 10 hour shift, and if the employer elects to proceed under a “no accrual or carry over” system … of providing paid sick leave, does the employer have to “front load” that employee at the beginning of the year with 30 hours of leave (three days at 10 hours per day) or only with 24 hours of leave on the theory that a “day” is limited to a maximum of eight hours?
Continue Reading Labor Commissioner’s First Opinion Letter On California’s New Paid Sick Leave Law
Joining similar holdings from several other circuits, the Ninth Circuit
recently held in Mayo v. PCC Structurals, Inc. that a depressed employee who threatened to kill his co-workers and was thereafter fired was not a qualified individual under the ADA. The court therefore affirmed the district court’s summary judgment on the employee’s disability discrimination claim.
Stress, Depression, and Bullying Lead Employee to Threaten Co-Workers’ Lives
The plaintiff, Timothy Mayo, welded aircraft parts for PCC Structurals. In 1999, Mayo was diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD). Despite the diagnosis, he continued working without incident for years. In 2010, that changed. Mayo and some other co-workers felt they were being bullied by their supervisor. Following a co-worker’s complaint and a subsequent meeting to discuss the bullying, Mayo told three different co-workers that he wanted to kill the supervisor. He told one co-worker that he felt like bringing a shotgun to work and “blowing off” the supervisor and others’ heads. He told another co-worker that he wanted to “bring a gun down and start shooting people,” explaining that 1:30 p.m. was an optimal time because all of the supervisors would be present. Pretty scary stuff.
Mayo’s co-workers reported the threats and HR reached out to him. He told an HR representative that he “couldn’t guarantee” he wouldn’t carry out the threats. PCC suspended him and called the police, who in turn took Mayo into custody for six days on the basis that he was a threat to himself and others. After his release, Mayo spent two months on FMLA leave. His doctor thereafter cleared him to return to work but suggested that he be assigned a different supervisor. Instead, PCC fired him.Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Says Employee Who Made Death Threats Against His Co-Workers Could Not Sue His Employer For Disability Discrimination
