It is an old joke that the world can be divided into people who are good at math and those who go to law school. Whether you believe the joke or not, math – or in this case, simple arithmetic – can be at the heart of many wage and hour questions. On March 5, 2018, the California Supreme Court issued an opinion in Alvarado v. Dart Container Corp. The Court articulated a rule on how an employee’s overtime pay rate should be calculated when the employee has earned a flat sum bonus during a single pay period. Please be aware of the emphasized language: flat sum bonus.
Continue Reading Are You Doing it Right? California Supreme Court Clarifies Overtime Rate Calculations
Have You Ever Disagreed With An Employee About How They Should Do Their Work?
Beware. Routine criticisms of job performance when directed to employees engaged in a caring profession, may subject you to retaliation and whistleblower claims.
So you hire an employee, call her a brick layer. She is a horrible brick layer. You get in constant arguments with her concerning the quality of her brick laying. You say that the bricks must be square and aligned and she says, no they look better if they are crooked, uneven and “rustic.” Firing that employee for discharging her duties as a brick layer in a way the employer finds unacceptable is, in almost all cases, a low risk decision. Subjective dislike of an employee’s work performance is a time honored and well recognized “legitimate nondiscriminatory, nonretaliatory,” reason for termination.
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Trap for the Unwary: Elimination of the Position as Opposed to Termination for Cause
Employers sometimes see a position elimination or reduction in force as a way of terminating employees that is kinder and gentler than termination for cause. Position eliminations and reductions in force allow an employer to say goodbye to an employee without having to lay out the reasons for the separation on the employee’s door step. It is, after all, easier to say the “business won’t support your continued employment,” than it is to say, “we don’t like your work.” While some people may embrace confrontation, my experience has been that most employers don’t like to frankly tell their employees that their work performance is inadequate. Employers or managers can feel nitpicky, impolite, and discourteous, when they document an employee’s performance deficiencies.
Continue Reading Trap for the Unwary: Elimination of the Position as Opposed to Termination for Cause
California Fair Pay Act Confusion – Understanding California Labor Code Section 1197.5
The following discussion concerns the California Fair Pay Act, and how to apply it. If you are unfamiliar with the Act, you may wish to begin by reading this blog.
I get calls from employers asking: “When I group my employees by substantial similarity of work, how do I know that I am doing it correctly?” These employers fear that someone – a Court, a plaintiff, or an employee – will come along and challenge the employer’s determination of who among its employees are engaged in “substantially similar” work.
The statute affirmatively requires employers to engage in that grouping. Unlike earlier equal pay act legislation, California’s Fair Pay Act puts the burden of proving compliance with the statute on the employer. Many employers are understandably concerned that their categorization of employees into groups of “substantial similarity” will be subject to criticism and attack.
The statutory language itself provides some relief to this anxiety. The section says:
Continue Reading California Fair Pay Act Confusion – Understanding California Labor Code Section 1197.5
Is Panic Really the Best Choice? One Lawyer’s Approach to Analyzing “Substantially Similar Work” Under the California Fair Pay Act
Since the passage of the California Fair Pay act in late 2015 (effective January 1, 2016) and its recent amendments, many employers and commentators have criticized the statute for imposing a vague and dangerous standard on California employers.
The California Fair Pay Act replaces the former “equal work” standard of the Equal Pay Act with