Employers often ask me the question of what steps can they take to stop employment litigation. My response usually begins with a warning that there is nothing an employer can do that will prevent a frivolous lawsuit. Employers can only control their actions and decisions, and by thinking about and reviewing a few simple items at least once a quarter, it can greatly reduce a company’s liability. Here are five steps employer can start with:

1. Implement accurate and easy to use timekeeping system.
California law requires employers to track start and stop times for hourly, non-exempt employees. The law also requires employer to track the start and stop times for the employee’s thirty minute meal periods. The time system needs to be accurate, and the employer needs to be involved in the installation and setup of the system. Do not simply use the default settings for the hardware and software. Understand what the system is tracking and how it is recording the data. Since the statute of limitations for California wage and hour violations can extent back four years, it is recommended that employers take steps to keep these records at least four years.

2. Keep handbook and related policies up to date.
Employers should periodically have their handbooks, operating policies and new hire packets reviewed to ensure they are current. Employers need to remember that a review of policies should extend beyond the handbook, but should also incorporate a review of all other policies, pay practices, and documents that are given to employees when they are hired, during employment, and at termination.

3. Document everything.
I cannot overemphasis the need to document what occurs in the workplace. Most importantly, employers need to document employee performance. It is all too often that a problem employee’s personnel file does not contain any type of documentation about his poor performance. Then, when the employee challenges the employer’s termination decision, it is much harder to prove the business reason behind the decision.

4. Get to know an employment attorney you can run issues by on a day-to-day basis.
You knew this was coming, but regardless of the unashamed self-promotion, employers should have counsel that is well versed in California employment law. California’s employment laws are very nuanced, and an attorney that has experience in this area will save the company not only in legal fees, but also in potential exposure. I have a client that says that when you have a problem with your eyes, you don’t go to you general practitioner. The same applies for advice on California employment issues. It is very unique. In addition, working with an employment lawyer on a routine basis is also a great way to see how he or she works and if the lawyer is compatible with your operations. This is much better to find out early on, instead of discovering that you don’t get along with your counsel in the middle of defending a class action lawsuit.

5. Consider hiring a knowledgeable HR professional.
An experienced HR professional will allow the president or other executives in the company to focus their time and energy in their core roles. In addition, it is helpful from a structural and managerial perspective for the employees in an organization to know exactly who to go to for HR information or complaints. A human resources professional with experience in handling workplace investigations and dealing with employee complaints is very valuable to a company – let’s face it, no matter how well you run your company, there will be complaints. Having a proactive, knowledgeable professional assisting in the process of investigating and resolving the issues is instrumental to a successful company.

Welcome to Friday’s 5, a series of posts each Friday of lists of five items in various aspect of California employment law. I hope to keep it informative and interesting, and provide a checklist of sorts for California employers to review various practices and policies. Starting off, here is a list of five items not to be overlooked by California employers:

1. Wage Theft Protection Act Notices To Employees.
California’s Wage Theft Protection Act of 2011 has required every employer in California to provide written notices to employees beginning in January 1, 2012. The law is set forth in Labor Code section 2810.5, and requires private employers to provide all new non-exempt employees with a written notice that contains certain basic information about their employment. The law also requires employers to notify employees in writing of any changes to the information in the notice within seven calendar days of any changes, unless the changes are reflected on a timely wage statement that complies with Labor code Section 226. Employers do not need to notify employees of any changes if the change is provided in another writing required by law within seven days of the changes. The California Labor Commissioner has published a sample notice template that complies with the requirements of the law, which can be viewed here [PDF]. This is an easy form to complete for non-exempt employees, and should be a mandatory document in every employer’s new hire packet.

2. Written commission statements signed by both the employee and employer.
As of January 1, 2013, when an employee is paid commissions, the employer must provide a written contract setting forth the method the commissions will be computed and paid. The written agreement must be signed by both the employer and employee. Commission wages are “compensation paid to any person for services rendered in the sale of such employer’s property or services and based proportionately upon the amount or value thereof.” Commissions do not include (1) short-term productivity bonuses, (2) temporary, variable incentive payment that increase, but do not decrease, payment under the written contract, and (3) bonus and profit-sharing plans, unless there has been an offer by the employer to pay a fixed percentage of sales or profits as compensation for work to be performed.

3. Pregnancy disability leave policy in employee handbook.
For employers with five or more employees, it is mandatory that they have a pregnancy disability leave (PDL) policy. Moreover, if the employer has an employee handbook, it is required to include information about pregnancy leave in the handbook. For more information about PDL under California law, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing provides a summary of basic requirements here.

4. Harassment prevention training for supervisors every two years.
Since 2005, California employers with more than 50 employees must provide two hours of sexual harassment prevention training to supervisors and managers within six months of hire or promotion, and every two years after that. Completion of the training should be documented in the supervisor’s personnel file.

5. California employers must pay visiting out-of-state workers according to California overtime rules.
In Sullivan v. Oracle the California Supreme Court has clarified that California’s overtime rules apply to anyone performing work within the state, regardless of their state of residency or how long they may be working in California.

I know, I’m the first one to admit things have been pretty dormant here at the California Employment Law Report. It is actually a good sign of my growing practice, but with the increasing list of employers I’ve been advising, the less time I’ve had to write articles and conduct webinars. This will be changing however.

I’m introducing Friday’s 5 Best Practices. Starting this Friday, I will post an article every Friday with lists of five items that are best practices for California employers that I routinely see in defending employment lawsuits. [I have to admit, I stole this idea from Steven Pressfield. He is the author of the War of Art, and the newly released The Lion’s Gate and writes Writing Wednesdays blog post every week documenting how a writer can overcome writer’s block, or as he calls it, the Resistance.]

This Friday’s article will discuss the 5 legally required items often overlooked by California employers. Should you have any suggestions for any future articles or areas of review for the Friday’s 5, please don’t hesitate to drop me a note.   

Generally, yes, and surprisingly this is one area that legislation is well ahead of the general adoption of the technical capabilities available in the marketplace. For example, in 1999 the California Legislature enacted the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (the “UETA”), Civ. Code, §§ 1633.1 et seq., which provides that when a law requires a record to be in writing or requires a signature, an electronic record or signature satisfies the law. The law requires that any contract entered into between two parties may not be denied legal enforceability simply because of the use of an electronic signature. In 2000, the U.S. Congress passed the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (“ESIGN”), 15 U.S.C. § 7001 et seq., which provides for the enforceability of electronic signatures on the federal level. In addition, most states have also passed their version of the UETA. Taken together, these laws provide authority that electronic signatures are legally binding, just as if the contract was signed in the traditional “wet” manner.

The enforceability of electronic signatures in the employment context was confirmed in recently by a California Federal District Court in Chau v. EMC Corp. (2014). In Chau, the plaintiff sued EMC alleging she was discriminated against because of her pregnancy. The company made a motion to compel arbitration. The plaintiff opposed defendant’s motion to compel arbitration on various grounds, but in particular argued that the arbitration agreement was never signed by the plaintiff. The court rejected plaintiff’s argument, and upheld the electronic signature in this case:

Defendants have also established that Chau signed the Key Employee Agreement, including accepting the arbitration provision. [citations omitted] Chau agreed that “an electronic signature by me (checking Yes) is valid as if I had signed the documents referred to below by hand.” See also Cal. Civ.Code § 1633.2(h) (defining “electronic signature” to include a process [i.e. checking Yes] executed by a person with the intent to sign the electronic record). Accordingly, defendants have established that a valid, signed, arbitration agreement exists between plaintiff and defendants. Neither party disputes that the agreement encompasses the issues in this case.

For the electronic signature to be binding, the ESIGN and UETA require that the signer of the agreement must have intended to sign the agreement, and that the parties consented to complete the agreement electronically. However, as the court in EMC recognized, the laws do not require a traditional signature, but rather “an electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with an electronic record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the electronic record.” Therefore, someone can electronically sign a document by checking a box indicating that they are “signing” the document as was done in the EMC case.

I was interviewed for a news story that aired on KTLA here in Los Angeles about employer’s use of social media in evaluating applicants and employees. I’ve been writing and speaking about this topic for at least five years now, but given the pervasiveness of social media, the topic is only becoming more relevant with the increased use of social media today.

http://launch.newsinc.com/?type=VideoPlayer/Single&widgetId=1&trackingGroup=69016&siteSection=ktla_virtualrealitycheck&videoId=25655497

 Employers need to remember to keep a few items in mind regarding social media and the workplace. California passed a law, Labor Code section 980, effective January 1, 2013 that prohibits employers from “requiring or requesting” employees and applicants to provide their passwords to social media accounts. Can California employers monitor employees’ internet usage under new Labor Code section 980?

Also, employers need to be aware of employee’s privacy rights. Can employers use employee’s posts to social media as basis for employment decisions or would this violate an employee’s right to privacy?

Finally, when a company encourages employees to use social media for work, there are some considerations the employer should take into account regarding the ownership of the social media accounts.

Generally speaking, employers may utilize social networking sites to conduct background checks on employees if:

  1. The employer and/or its agents conduct the background check themselves;
  2. The site is readily accessible to the public;
  3. The employer does not need to create a false alias to access the site;
  4. The employer does not have to provide any false information to gain access to the site; and
  5. The employer does not use the information learned from the site in a discriminatory manner or otherwise prohibited by law.

As many California employers know, ignoring or failing to comply with the requirements of providing meal and rest breaks in California can create huge liability for companies. California law does allow for “on-duty” meal periods, whereby the employee takes a meal break, but while still working. Employers sometimes view this exception as an easy alternative to having employees clock out and leave the company’s premises for meal breaks. However, the on-duty meal break exception has been interpreted to apply only in a very limited set of circumstances, and needs to be carefully examined before implementing in a workplace.

Pursuant to Labor Code section 226.7 and the Wage Orders (for example Wage Order 4-2001, section 11(b)), each failure to provide the specified meal period entitles the employee to receive an additional compensation premium equal to one hour of pay.

The Wage Order provides for an “on duty” meal period that is an exception to the required meal break if the following requirements are met:

An "on duty" meal period shall be permitted only when the nature of the work prevents an employee from being relieved of all duty and when by written agreement between the parties an on-the-job paid meal period is agreed to. The written agreement shall state that the employee may, in writing, revoke the agreement at any time.

Wage Order No. 4-2001(a)(emphasis added). Unfortunately, the definition of the “nature of the work” is not clear, and the only real guidance California employers have on this issue is a Department of Labor Standards Enforcement (“DLSE”) opinion letter. Click here to download the opinion letter.

In the opinion letter, the DLSE addressed the issue of whether a shift manager in a fast food restaurant working the night shift would be allowed to take a “on duty” meal period. The DLSE began its analysis in stating that the off duty meal period is the default requirement, and any exceptions to this requirement should be narrowly construed.

The DLSE set forth factors it considered in determining whether the nature of the work prevents the employee from taking an off-duty meal period. The factors included:

  • the type of work
  • the availability of other employees to relieve the employee during a meal period
  • the potential consequences to the employer if the employee is relieved of all duty
  • the ability of the employer to anticipate and minimize these staffing issues such as by scheduling employees in a manner that would allow the employee to take an off-duty meal break and
  • whether the “work product or process” would be destroyed or damaged if the employee were given an off-duty meal period.

The DLSE concluded that based on the facts presented in the situation of the fast food restaurant, the nature of the work in the restaurant should not prevent the shift manager from being relieved of all duties for 30 minutes, and therefore the on-duty meal period would not be valid in this context.
In the class action setting, the issue of on-duty meal breaks has resulted in varying opinions. For example, the Ninth Circuit appellate court in Abdullah v. U.S. Security Associates, Inc. upheld the lower court’s granting of class certification on whether a security guard company’s use of on-duty meal period agreements was valid. Alternatively, a California appellate court, in Faulkinbury v. Boyd & Associates, Inc., upheld the denial of class certification for a case also involving on-duty meal period agreements for security guards. Implementing an on-duty meal period agreement in California needs to be approached with caution, and should only be done with assistance from knowledgeable counsel.

1) Who owns a tip?

California law is clear that voluntary tips left for an employee for goods sold or services performed belong to the employee, not the employer. Labor Code section 351 provides, “No Employer or agent shall collect, take or receive any gratuity or a part thereof that is paid, given to, or left for an employee by a patron…. Every gratuity is hereby declared to be the sole property of the employee or employees to whom it was paid, given, or left for.”

2) Is employer mandated tip pooling legal?

Yes. In the seminal 1990 case on tip-pooling, Leighton v. Old Heidelberg, Ltd., the court held that an employer’s practice of tip pooling among employees was not prohibited by section 351 because the employer did not “collect, take, or receive” any part of a gratuity left by a patron, and did not credit tips or deduct tip income from employee wages. The court relied upon the “industry practice” that 15% of the gratuity is tipped out to the busboy and 5% to the bartender, which was “a house rule and is with nearly all Restaurants.” However, owners, managers, or supervisors of the business cannot share in the tip pool.

3) When do tip tips left on credit cards have to be paid, and can a deduction made for processing the credit card transaction?

If a patron leaves a tip on their credit card, the employer may not deduct any credit card processing fees from the tip left for the employee. Moreover, tips left using a credit card must be paid to employees no later than the next regular payday following the date the credit card payment was authorized. See Labor Code § 351.

4) Does California allow an employer to credit a portion of the employee’s tips towards minimum wage?

No. While some states provide the employer with a “tip credit”, California law does not allow this. However, with the recent passage of the increase in California’s minimum wage from $8 per hour to $9 per hour on July 1, 2014, and then to $10 per hour on January 1, 2016, there is more discussion of examining whether a tip credit should be considered in California. However, current law does not allow employers to “credit” an employee’s tips towards the minimum wage requirement for each hour worked.

5) Do tips change an employee’s regular rate of pay for overtime calculations?

No. Because tips are voluntarily left by customers to employees, tips do not increase an employee’s regular rate of pay used to calculate overtime rates.

Generally, employees have a privacy expectation in their personnel files, contact information, and work related information. However, this expectation of privacy is not limitless, especially when the employee publically airs his or her work experiences on social media sites for the public to see. Courts have held that employees can waive this right to privacy once they make disclosures in public for everyone else to read via social media networks.

For example, in a case not in the employment context, a California court reviewed the issue of whether an author who posts an article on myspace.com can state a cause of action for invasion of privacy and for intentional infliction of emotional distress against a person who submits that article to a newspaper for republication. The case, Moreno v. Hanford Sentinel, Inc. involved a college student who had moved away from her home town of Coalinga, California. She wrote “An ode to Coalinga” and posted it on her site on MySpace.com. The ode badmouthed her hometown. Six days after publishing it on MySpace, she took the writing off of the site, but the town’s high school principal submitted the writing to the local newspaper for publication. The newspaper republished the ode in the letters to the editor section and listed Moreno’s full name even though she only used her first name on her MySpace page. The ode must have contained some serious dirt on the city, as it resulted in death threats against Moreno’s family, and eventually forced her family to close a 20 year old business and move out of town.

Moreno sued for invasion of her privacy alleging that her post on MySpace was only supposed to be viewed by a few of her friends, and because she removed the post six days after publishing the article. The court rejected Moreno’s theory that the newspaper’s publication violated her right to privacy because her post to MySpace was made virtually to everyone with an Internet connection. The Court reasoned that, “[Moreno’s] affirmative act made her article available to any person with a computer and thus opened it to the public eye. Under these circumstances, no reasonable person would have had an expectation of privacy regarding the published material. As pointed out by appellants, to be a private fact, the expectation of privacy need not be absolute.” Therefore, the court held that “the fact [Moreno] expected a limited audience does not change the above analysis. By posting the article on myspace.com, [Moreno] opened the article to the public at large. Her potential audience was vast.” The court concluded that Moreno therefore could not asserted a cause of action for invasion of her right to privacy against the newspaper.

Even though this case is not involving employment information, a similar analysis would apply to an employee who posts information on social media about workplace issues. Once the employee places the information about his or her work circumstances on social media, this greatly reduces the employee’s privacy in the subject matter. However, an employer should be cautious, and use common sense in responding to such posts. For example, if an employee posts negative information about the company on social media, it would obviously not give the employer a right to disclose the employee’s health information and documents from the employee’s personnel file. Alternatively, if the employee posts about how bad an employer treated him or her, the employer would have the right to publically set the record straight with facts specific to rebut the allegations made by the employee.

Employers should use common sense in responding publically to an employee’s or former employee’s posts on social media and keep any discussions limited to the facts and issues raised by the employee. Furthermore, employers should approach situations with caution when an employee’s posts on social media are password protected and only friends of the employee can view the post. Hacking or gaining access to social media posts under false pretenses is most likely illegal, and would tilt the analysis back into the employee’s favor that the information was not disclosed to everyone and, therefore, would be considered private. In addition, employers may never retaliate against employees for making complaints via the internet or otherwise, and should be careful in making employment decisions based on employees’ complaints about workplace issues even if made on the Internet.

With Governor Brown’s signing of the bill raising California’s minimum wage to $10.00 per hour by January 2016, there are a few new considerations this triggers for California employers.  This quick video discusses the increase in guaranteed salary employers must pay in order to for employees to qualify as exempt. 

//www.youtube.com/embed/hQk14P9aMJI

Yesterday, Governor Brown signed into law SB 462 which amends Labor Code section 218.5 to only allow employers to recover their attorney’s fees and costs upon a finding by the court that the employee brought the claim in bad faith. This Labor Code section applies to actions for nonpayment of wages, fringe benefits, or health and welfare or pension fund contributions.

Prior to this amendment, Labor Code section 218.5 permitted the employee or the employer to recover their attorney’s fees and costs if they prevailed in the underlying action – and there was no need for the employer to make this harder showing that the employee brought the case in bad faith in order to recover its fees and costs. This amendment now makes it harder for employers to recover attorney’s fees and costs upon prevailing in a case involving unpaid wages.