Articles

Employers who plan to resume business operations and return employees to the physical workplace after the relaxation of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders must consider how to best balance the reopening of their businesses with the health and safety of their workers and compliance with an evolving legal landscape.

The latest wave of COVID-19 restrictions requires many Americans to wear face coverings in public, and employers to provide them.

The New Year will bring with it many new legal requirements for California employers. Although much of the focus has been on the passage of AB 5 and its new, onerous standards for independent contractor classification, there are numerous other laws that employers must be aware of and take measures to comply with in advance of their January 1, 2020 effective date.

On September 24, 2019, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued its much-anticipated Final Rule amending the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations for exemptions from overtime pay requirements for so-called “white-collar” exemptions. By January 1, 2020, employers will need to ensure that their workforces are properly classified in accordance with the Final Rule, which will increase the minimum salary required for an employee to be considered exempt from overtime.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law Assembly Bill 5—sweeping legislation that requires most “gig economy” workers to be treated as employees, effective January 1, 2020. The law impacts not only tech giants in the gig economy, but also applies to many traditional contract workers such as truckers, software coders, janitors and exotic dancers, among many others. Multiple industries and occupations secured exemptions to the law, but they still must comply with the traditional tests for independent contractor status.

The proposed changes seek to formally rescind the Obama Administration’s 2016 Final Rule, which more than doubled the minimum salary levels for exemption for overtime requirements. Instead, the Trump Administration proposes increasing current minimum salary levels by almost 50 percent.

When a board decides it must terminate a CEO’s employment, the terms of the executive’s employment agreement will dictate whether the association is required to pay severance. Carefully crafted “cause” definitions are critical.

We often write about the benefits and pitfalls of social media usage. As companies and big businesses employ social media as an advertising mainstay, one pitfall we frequently encounter is the failure to properly manage a company’s social media handles.

In the last decade, social media platforms have embedded themselves in the human resources function in companies worldwide.

In a brief news release on January 5, 2018, the DOL announced that, to determine whether interns are employees under the FLSA, it will henceforth conform to the “primary beneficiary” test first adopted by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in its 2015 ruling in Glatt v. Fox Searchlight Pictures Inc., 811 F.3d 528 (2d Cir. 2015).