Category: Employment Law

As covered on this blog, California has been taking steps to address classification of workers as independent contractors. While this has taken on different forms, including the monumental Dynamex decision, the state legislature recently finalized its own measure with the passage of AB5 to codify the ABC test set forth in Dynamex. The passage of the bill largely overhauls employment…

Since April 30, 2018, when the California Supreme Court issued its decision in Dynamex Operations West. v. Superior Court, California motor carriers, as well as many other businesses, have been struggling to deal with the unexpected new “ABC test” for deciding who is an independent contractor and who is an employee. Under its problematic B prong,…

Company principals in all California industries are daily focused on multiple opportunities and challenges across every conceivable work-related sphere. Here’s an elevated concern: workplace-linked domestic violence. That subject matter is virtually guaranteed to make any business owner or manager wince. Employee violence — both its commission and its sad effects visited upon a victim —…

We hope that there are several instructive takeaways concerning employment law on our website at the Southern California business law firm of Larson & Gaston. We suspect that one thing central to the realm that likely jumps out from our narrative is employment law’s sheer complexity. The on-the-job interaction between employers and workers encompasses wide-ranging matters.…

The Americans with Disabilities Act provides that employees with disabling medical conditions can take leave for multi-month periods, even for a year or longer. But wait a minute. Perhaps that’s wrong. As noted in a recent overview of the ADA and its parameters, some analysts say that the federal legislation allows instead for only “brief periods…

Employment discrimination is against the law in various circumstances, which is something for both employees and employers to know. For instance, employers aren’t allowed to turn down a potential employee just because he or she has a disability. As long as an individual is capable of performing the job, he or she should receive a…

American Airlines and its largest regional affiliate, Envoy Air, recently agreed to settle a lawsuit that accused the airlines of denying accommodations to disabled workers. American and Envoy agreed to pay $9.8 million to resolve claims that they didn’t allow disabled workers to return to their jobs or transfer into open positions when they had restrictions…

Sexual harassment is having a moment in the news right now – and it’s not a good one. While the victims are getting a chance to share their stories without shame, it shows a much larger issue within the workplace in the entertainment industry. This problem doesn’t start and stop with the film and TV…

In what has been called potentially “the first shareholder proposal calling for a company to rethink its policy on paid family leave,” Starbucks is being pressured to publicly address a glaring gap that exists regarding a key employee benefit. Namely, that is time off for a worker following the birth of a child. Starbucks’ family leave…

For California employers and prospective hirees, this cuts both ways. On the one hand, a hiring manager might reasonably be deemed to have a legitimate concern when a background check reveals a criminal record for a job applicant. And on the other hand, that applicant unquestionably has valid concerns when he or she checks off…

In the workplace, and as regards the interaction between employers and employees, the relationship is symbiotic. That is, each side needs the other and engages in a balancing act of give and take. Labor exchanged for wages. Time for food. It’s an interesting phenomenon, isn’t it? And while it is certainly true that both sides…

A recent Bloomberg article terms it an “imbroglio.” Other depictions might be apt, too, of course, including this one: public relations disaster. It hasn’t been the sweetest August thus far for tech giant Google, which, rather than currently being in the news for mainstream articles on business performance and related information is instead embroiled in…

he debate rages on. Title VII of the seminal Civil Rights Act passed by Congress in 1964 extended workplace protections against discrimination on myriad grounds. Notably, protection for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community was not included in the list of safeguarded categories, and that continues to be the case today. A recent article…

The Private Attorney General Act, or PAGA, allows an aggrieved employee to act as if they are the state in an attempt to make claims for recovery of civil penalties for Labor Code violations. Claims under this Act essentially substitute the plaintiff for a state labor law enforcement agency and give the plaintiff similar rights…

What a UC Berkeley honors graduate who came back to her alma mater last summer to work with a described “world-renowned professor of philosophy” as his assistant prior to embarking on a graduate program reasonably expected was s singular opportunity to grow in her chosen field. What she nearly immediately experienced instead, as related in…

The below-described entertainment litigation imbroglio has a close and obvious nexus to Los Angeles, given the film industry’s central association with the city, which is flatly unparalleled elsewhere. By happenstance, though, the venue that most formally features in a tale involving multiple allegations of wrongdoing and claims for damages that are well in excess of $100…

The “ban the box ” campaign is a national push to prohibit employers from asking prospective employees about their criminal records during the early stages of the hiring process.  Twelve states, as well as 70 cities and counties, have implemented “ban the box” legislation. California joined these states in late 2013 with AB 218. Under AB…