Next week Los Angeles employers need to comply with new minimum wage and paid sick leave requirements.  I have written about the new laws a lot recently, but wanted to provide five items in today’s Friday’s Five to review in ensuring your company is ready for the new laws for next week’s deadlines:

  1. Understand where your employees work and which laws apply to them.

Just because your business is not located in the City or County of Los Angeles, Pasadena, or Santa Monica does not mean your company can ignore the new laws.  The ordinances passed all include similar provisions that state if an employee works two hours within the City or County the employer must comply with the law:

  • Santa Monica:  Law applies to any employee working a minimum of two hours within Santa Monica in a given week (even if employer is located outside of Santa Monica).
  • City of Los Angeles: “An employee is an individual who performs at least two hours of work in a particular week within the City of Los Angeles….”
  • County of Los Angeles: “Anyone who works at least two hours in a one-week period within the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County is entitled to the County minimum wage for the hours worked in the unincorporated area of the County.”
  • Pasadena: Applies to employees who perform at least two hours of work in Pasadena.
  1. Don’t assume Los Angeles City’s paid sick leave requirements are the same as state law.

As of July 1, 2016, the City of Los Angeles requires employers with 26 or more employees to provide employees with 48 hours of paid sick leave.  Employers within the City of Los Angeles must review the new law carefully to ensure they are following the City’s paid sick leave requirements, and while there are some similarities with California’s paid sick law, there are many differences.  The City of Los Angeles has very specific requirements about the accrual methods and caps on accrual.  For example, California’s state law allows employers to require employee to use paid sick leave in two hour increments, but the City of Los Angeles does not permit this, so if an employee uses less than two hours the employer can only deduct the actual amount of paid sick leave used by the employee from their sick leave bank.  Also, the City’s law allows employees to use paid sick leave to take care of “any individual related by blood or affinity whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship.”  Who is someone with the “equivalent” of a family relationship?  Good question.  Employers must review the new requirements carefully to ensure compliance with these new requirements (and update handbooks and policies if necessary).

  1. Don’t forget to post new notices.

Santa Monica notices:  https://cityofsantamonica.app.box.com/s/nuccal4on935m43p0nhmuzgy65f5mbwl

City of Los Angeles notice: http://wagesla.lacity.org/#information

County of Los Angeles notice: http://file.lacounty.gov/dca/cms1_245570.pdf

Pasadena notice:  http://www.cityofpasadena.net/minimumwage/

  1. Need to know if you are in an incorporated or unincorporated city within Los Angeles County.

Employers who have workers working in any unincorporated area in Los Angeles County must comply with the County’s ordinance.  If workers work in an incorporated city within the County, the incorporated city’s laws would apply, and if the city does not address minimum wage or paid sick leave, then the employer must follow California state law.  However, if an incorporated city, such as Santa Monica, implemented a law, employers must comply with the law that provides the employee with the most benefits and protection.

Click here for resource to determine if your workers work in an incorporated or unincorporated city within Los Angeles County.

  1. Review new hire packets to ensure you are providing all required notices to employees.

 The new laws have some intricacies that employers need to be aware of.  For example, the County of Los Angeles’ new law requires that employers provide employees with written notices setting forth the employer’s tip policy, including any tip sharing, pooling, or allocations policies, if applicable.

Likewise, Santa Monica’s law also sets out requirements pertaining to service charges collected by employers.  Santa Monica requires that all service charges must be distributed to workers who generally performed services for which the charge was collected, and it permits employers to share the service charge with back-of-house employees.  Employers must inform employees of the service charge distribution keep records of the distributions.