The Fair Employment and Housing Council has approved amended regulations pertaining to gender identity and transgender individuals in the workplace. These regulations take effect July 1, 2017. Some of the amendments merely clean up existing language (for example, references to “both sexes”) to allow broader and more neutral gender references. Other amendments impose additional obligations/prohibitions for employers, such as...

OSHA finalized new electronic injury and illness reporting rules in May 2016 that would require certain employers to submit electronic reports with injury and illness data. These new reporting requirements were scheduled to go into effect July 1, 2017 and were to be phased in over two years. Specifically, businesses with 250 or more employees in industries covered by the recordkeeping regulation (which includes car dealerships) were required submit information from their 2016 Form 300A by July 1, 2017. These same employers would be required to submit information from all 2017 forms (300A, 300, and 301) by July 1, 2018. Beginning in 2019 and every year thereafter, the information would be due by March 2.

Under California’s Labor Code (Sections 551 and 552), employees are entitled to one day's rest in seven, and employers are not permitted to cause employees to work more than six days in seven. These rules do not apply in a week in which the employee didn’t work more than 30 hours or more than 6 hours on any day of that week (Section 556). These rules also do not apply when the nature of the employment reasonably requires that the employee work seven or more consecutive days, if in each calendar month the employee receives days of rest equivalent to one day's rest in seven.

Real estate buy sell transactions typically involve items of so-called due diligence, i.e., items which the buyer must investigate and either approve or disapprove by a stated deadline. Such items include financing, status of title, and condition of the property. This raises important questions for the buyer.

The California Wage Orders regulate many of the wage/hour obligations that employers deal with every day, including overtime pay, exemptions, meal/rest breaks, minimum wage, reporting time pay and alternative workweek schedules, to name just a few. There are different wage orders that cover different industries/occupations, although there is substantial overlap in the provisions of most wage orders. Car dealerships are generally covered by Wage Order 7 (Mercantile Industry). With the ongoing increases in the California minimum wage, the Industrial Welfare Commission has issued an amendment to the existing Wage Orders that updates the provisions involving the minimum wage rate.

In Featherstone v. Southern California Permanente Medical Group, a California Court of Appeal maintained the boundary that was created when an employee became a former employee. In that case, the plaintiff/employee took some time off from work for a medical condition, and not long after returning to work, she informed her supervisor over the phone that she was resigning her employment. A few days later, she confirmed her resignation in an email to her supervisor. The employer then promptly processed the employer’s resignation and issued her final pay. Days later, the employee requested to rescind her resignation, stating that at the time she resigned, she was on medication for her condition that altered her mental state and caused her to resign. The employer declined her request to rescind the resignation. The employee then sued for disability discrimination under the Fair Employment and Housing Act, as well as wrongful termination in violation of public policy.

Progressive discipline policies are preferred by many employers as a method to ensure fair and consistent administration of disciplinary action and more predictability for employees. However, employment plaintiffs love to use these policies against employers to deflect attention from their bogus claims onto an employer’s supposed shoddy practices. Here are a few tips to limit the extent an employment plaintiff can try to use these progressive discipline policies against you.

On May 2, 2017, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing announced the release of an updated brochure addressing sexual harassment (Form DFEH-185). Under Government Code 12950(b), employers must distribute this brochure to all employees, or distribute its own written policy that contains, at a minimum, provisions on the following...

Don't miss this month's feature article in F&I and Showroom—Playing With Fire: Two attorneys issue a warning about a new sales trick circulating through the industry—by The Scali Law Firm's Christian Scali and Monica Baumann. Their advice: If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Have you heard the new one? A sales trainer is suggesting a new sales tactic that leads to salespeople regularly selling vehicles for more than the advertised price. The practice essentially invites customers to pay an additional amount above the advertised price as a tip for excellent service or for getting an exceptional deal. Sounds too good to be true? That’s because it probably is.

Two bills are currently being considered in the state legislature that enhance protections for employees related to baby bonding leave and anti-discrimination law regarding use of reproductive services. Both of these proposed laws are still being worked and amended, and it will probably be months before their final disposition is known. However, they reflect the increased attention by lawmakers to employee issues related to child rearing and pregnancy, and that trend is likely to continue.

Under California Labor Code section 226(a), employers are required to provide an itemized statement semi-monthly or at the time of each payment of wages. In Blair v. Dole Food Co., a California Court of Appeal recently addressed a complaint brought by an exempt, salaried employee who alleged that her former employer, Dole Food Co., was in violation by: 1) failing properly to identify employees on their wage statements, and 2) failing to identify an accurate hourly pay rate for exempt employees when those employees were paid accrued vacation wages.

Most dealers and employers are aware of protected medical leaves such as the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and California Family Rights Act (CFRA). In most instances, these leaves are either unpaid, or are available to be compensated by state (not employer) sponsored programs such as State Disability Insurance and/or Paid Family Leave. However, many employers are unaware that employees who are donating bone marrow or an organ are required to be paid by their employer for time off associated with the donation.

Employers can (and should) require pre-employment drug testing, and refuse to hire a prospective employee if he/she fails to pass the drug test, provided notice and consent was properly given and obtained. Drug screens should only be conducted after a job offer has been made, and not as a way to screen applications. If the prospective employee refuses to take the test, the job offer can also be withdrawn, provided the employer gave all of the required notices and followed applicable law. But what if the drug test is inconclusive? And what should an employer do if an employee appears intoxicated at work? Read on for guidance on these tricky situations, and more.

The Scali Law Firm is pleased to announce that it has been chosen by the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA) to revise its 2015 Advertising Law Manual, published and available to California auto dealers who are members of the CNCDA. In 2015, the Scali Law Firm was asked to do a substantial re-write and re-working of the CNCDA’s first Advertising Law Manual, originally published in 2006, before the proliferation of digital and Internet vehicle advertising. The 2015 re-work focused on advertising in electronic media and via digital platforms.

In an unpublished decision in March, the Ninth Circuit (the federal circuit court governing California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii, Alaska, Montana and Idaho) permitted arbitration of a worker's Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) claim, holding that an individual employee contract can bind government parties. The California Supreme Court's Iskanian v. CLS Transportation Los Angeles decision "does not require that a PAGA claim be pursued in a judicial forum," the court said, and "clearly contemplate[d] that an individual employee can pursue a PAGA claim in arbitration, and thus that individual employees can bind the state to an arbitral forum."

Dealerships are taking another look at their commission pay plans in light of the recent California Court of Appeal case of Vaquero v. Stoneledge Furniture, LLC., which we featured in our March 1, 2017 Alert article. The Vaquero Court held that commission pay plans providing base pay covering time spent on rest breaks that could be “clawed-back” subject to future earnings was invalid under California law. Specifically, the Court held that employees who earn only commissions must be paid separately for rest breaks (since the commissions do not cover time spent resting), and that employers who pay employees both hourly wages and some form of incentive pay, including commissions, violate the rest period pay requirement if they claw back any part of the employees’ base hourly pay as a draw or advance against commissions.