Arbitration agreements are an increasingly popular way for employers to manage employment disputes effectively and efficiently. A common provision in arbitration agreements is a class action waiver, wherein the parties agree to resolve any dispute on an individual basis. Any employer who has faced a wage and hour class action understands how complex and expensive
On April 16, 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Order N-51-20, which provides new paid sick leave to certain food service workers. Citing a need to fill a “gap” left by the federal Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which applies solely to employers with fewer than 500 employees, this new Executive Order provides up to 80 hours of “COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave” to defined food sector workers.
(Zaller Law Group is hosting a free webinar on Friday, April 24, 2020, to discuss this new Executive Order and answer your questions. Join us for Understanding California’s New Paid Sick Leave Requirements For Food Sector Employees.)
Here is what you need to know.
Executive Order N-51-20 applies to employers with 500 or more employees in the United States, including full-time and part-time workers but not including independent contractors. Employees on leave of any kind are counted, but employees furloughed or laid off are not counted unless and until they are reemployed.
The Executive Order expressly applies to any “Delivery Network Company” (companies that use a website or mobile app to enable local delivery of products/food from third-party merchants; think Postmates or GrubHub) and any “Transportation Network Company” (companies that provide transportation services using online apps/platforms that connect passengers with drivers using a personal vehicle; think Uber or Lyft) that employs 500 or more employees.
As with the FFCRA and FMLA, common employees of joint or integrated employers must be counted together.
There is one exception: if, as of April 16, 2020, the employer already provides a “supplemental benefit” such as paid leave that provides the same or greater benefit provided by this Executive Order, then the employer does not have to provide the COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave.
The Executive Order applies to “Food Sector Workers,” which it defines as any person who satisfies one of the following criteria:
I’ll be posting some short clips of a recent presentation I conducted on complying with California’s paid sick leave law. In this first video, I discuss some general rules California employers need to consider to comply with the July 1, 2015 deadline to offer paid sick leave to employees. Topics include:
You may recall from your college business law class of the “American rule” regarding attorney’s 
fees: generally in the United States each side is responsible to their own attorney’s fees, and unlike other countries, the loser does not have to pay the other party’s attorney’s fees. Employers can basically ignore this general rule
You’ve set up a successful company and begin hiring employees. 
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delve into the details of each exemption in detail, so I will be returning to a few of the exemptions to add more explanation about each exempt classification. I’m currently reading Paul Graham’s Hackers and Painters, Big
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1. What is a class action?
To understand what a class action is, it is better to start with the basic individual litigation concept. Normally, parties bring their own disputes to court and litigate the case against the other parties who have been officially designated a parties and served with process and understand that they
Uber and Lyft have been sued in separate class action lawsuits in California by drivers challenging
the two companies’ classification of the drivers as independent contractors. The plaintiffs in the two cases argue that the drivers should be classified and paid as employees, which triggers many additional Labor Code provisions for the drivers than if
I just discovered How to Start a Startup, which is a series of videos published by Stanford University on YouTube with some outstanding speakers. The problem is that the class videos are so great, I have a hard time turning them off. Case in point, this week I watched Ben Horowitz’ lecture: How to