Seyfarth Synopsis: Although the concept of working remotely may seem simple, employers must consider several issues before allowing employees to work from home.
There’s No Place Like Home
Today’s technology allows many employees to work nearly as well in their pajamas at home or in their jeans at a local coffee shop as they can
Continue Reading Home Sweet Home Office: Considerations With Remote Employees
By Ofer Lion
If your company is a nonprofit or has a nonprofit foundation, are you covered if something happens to your volunteers while they’re engaged in service to your organization?
The concern is real. There were 287 fatal occupation injuries among volunteers from 2003-2007. Prudent nonprofits carry insurance, called “volunteer accident insurance,” to cover injuries to volunteers.
Workers
Continue Reading Nonprofit Volunteers: We’ll work for free … unless we get hurt
Readers will recall that we recently corralled the law on “Assistive Animals” in the workplace, here. Now, in part two of our mini-series, we pony up an explanation of the rules governing the use of service animals by customers and patrons (as opposed to employees) in places of public accommodation, e.g., grocery or other stores, hotels, and movie theaters (as opposed to the workplace). While there are a few similarities, the California law covering service animals in places of public accommodation differ in significant ways from that governing such animals in the workplace. Reconciling these differences can be like herding cats, causing confusion for customers, employees, and employers that operate places of public accommodation. Please read on to ensure that when confronting these issues you will not be barking up the wrong tree.
What Is a “Service Animal,” Anyhow? While the workplace use of assistive animals is analyzed under the California Fair Employment & Housing Act and Title I of the federal ADA, the use of service animals by disabled individuals in places of public accommodation is governed by the California Unruh Act and Title III of the ADA. While some states define “service animals” more broadly, California (remarkably) adopts the more restrictive federal guidelines set forth in Title III. A “service animal” under Title III and California law is limited to any dog or miniature horse (yes, miniature horse) that is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for individuals with disabilities. Other species of animals—whether wild or domestic, trained or untrained—are not “service animals,” and are thus not permitted in places of public accommodation in California. So there is no special protection for the use of cats, rabbits, turtles, monkeys, llamas, or other animals sometimes said to provide service. See Patricia Marx, Pets Allowed, How to Take Your Pet Everywhere, THE NEW YORKER, (Oct. 20, 2014), http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/20/pets-allowed.
As in the employment context, pets in the public accommodation context do not qualify as “service animals” unless they meet the criteria above. Moreover, while an assistive animal may be a “reasonable accommodation” for a disabled employee in the workplace, assistive animals need not be permitted in places of public accommodation if their sole function is to provide emotional support, comfort, therapy, companionship, or crime deterrence (even if they are dogs or miniature horses). So when a customer claims some entitlement to bring a “therapy ferret” or “comfort Chihuahua” into your place of public accommodation, you know that is horse-feathers.
Continue Reading Can that Doggie in the Window … Enter my Store?
By Kristina Launey, Christina Jackson, Brad Doucette
Thursday, June 5 marked the last day for bills to pass out of their house of origin in the California Legislature. Here is a summary of some key employment bills that made it through (followed by some significant bills that did not), and how they may affect California businesses if they make it all the way to the Governor’s approval with their current language.
Leaves of Absence
Paid Sick Leave. AB 304. We’re all watching Assembly Member Lorena Gonzalez’s attempt to clean-up some of the language in her Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014, which took effect January 1, 2015, but which largely becomes operative July 1, 2015. On June 2, the Assembly approved inclusion of an urgency clause, which would allow the bill’s provisions to take effect immediately upon the Governor’s signing the bill; and exempts the bill from the house of origin deadline (the Assembly did not vote on it last week).
But, will the bill receive the Senate and Governor’s approval prior to July 1? It would have to move quickly, as would employers in adapting to these new provisions. Some key provisions in the current version of the bill are: (i) changing the rate of pay from a 90-day look-back to the regular rate, (ii) relieving employers of a duty to inquire or record the reason for an employee taking paid sick leave, (iii) allowing employers with unlimited time-off policies to comply with the written accrual notice by stating “unlimited” on the employee’s pay stub, and (iv) delaying until 2016 the written notice requirement for employers subject to Wage Orders 11 and 12. Look for an in-depth analysis on this bill here in coming days.
Meanwhile, Gonzalez’s AB 11, which would have included in-home support services under the definition of “employees” under the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act, did not make it out of the Assembly.
Kin Care. SB 579 seeks to amend California’s Kin Care law to tie its protections to the use of sick leave for the reasons specified in the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act of 2014. The bill also would expand coverage of California’s school activities leave (Family School Partnership Act) to include day care facilities and cover child care provider emergencies, and the finding, enrolling, or reenrolling of a child in a school or day care, and would extend protections to an employee who is a step-parent or foster parent or who stands in loco parentis to a child.
CFRA Leave. SB 406 would narrow the California Family Rights Act (“CFRA”) small business exemption. CFRA would now apply to businesses that employ 25—as opposed to the current 50 –within 75 miles. CFRA’s protections would also now extend to care for grandparents, all children (removing any age restriction), and grandchildren, as well as siblings, domestic partners, and in-laws.
Anti-Retaliation
Continue Reading 2015 Employment Bills Moving Through The CA Legislative Process
We feel your pain, and we have a prescription for you to consider: a non-accountable expense reimbursement plan.
First, let’s discuss your problem. If you have a salesforce, the force exists to sell stuff. So here’s an exercise:
Many of you, if truth be told, have no idea. You just want your good salespeople to keep doing … whatever it is that they’re doing … because, well, it’s working.
Effective sales people come in all forms and use all manner of methods: some wine and dine; others live on the phone; others rely heavily on encyclopedic product knowledge; others employ advanced statistics and analytics; some value regular face time with customers; others blur the line between their business and social lives; some might superstitiously choose to meet customers only at a favorite coffee shop; still others have forged such reliable customer bonds that their book of business sells itself with minimal maintenance.
What’s clear is that not all effective sales people do the same things—or incur the same expenses. But the last thing you want is for your expense reimbursement policy to crimp sales by stifling effective sales activities.
The Labor Commissioner, discussed here, has recognized the futility in guessing why or how sales are made. Outside salespeople, by definition, tend to do their own thing out in field; they “set their own time, and they’re on the road, they call on their customers[, in fact,] rarely do you know what they are doing. . . .” DLSE Op. Ltr. (September 8, 1998).
And while we don’t know precisely how salespeople sell, we can tell whether they’re selling by looking at their bottom line. If it takes a $300 concert ticket to make a $100,000 sale, that’s typically an acceptable return on investment. The trite quote is that it takes money to make money. If the results justify the expenses, who can question the seller’s methods? F. Ross Johnson (as played by James Garner in Barbarians at the Gate) had his own reaction to the second-guessing of expenses: “Every penny you think I’m [um… sneezing] away here, comes back to us dressed up like a nickel!”
Continue Reading Calling All Employers Who Use An Outside Salesforce
Breaking News: New CFRA regulations will take effect July 1, 2015.
Mandatory paid sick leave will not be the only new rule affecting California employers this summer. Also effective on July 1 are amendments to the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) regulations, just approved by the Office of Administrative Law. These regulations will more closely align the CFRA with the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) regulations. This is welcome news to California employers who have grappled with the overlay of the FMLA regulations (amended in 2008) and the pre-2008 CFRA regulations (which did not incorporate the FMLA’s 2008 amended regulations.) Nonetheless, some differences still exist between state and federal family and medical leave laws, including how the CFRA coordinates with state pregnancy disability leave laws.
Quick preview: The amended CFRA regulations include guidance on certain definitions (such as how to determine when businesses will be considered joint employers under CFRA), include changes to the mandatory poster requirement, and change what information employers must include on the certification form they make available to health care providers who are asked to certify leave for serious health conditions.
Coming soon: A complete analysis of the new amendments will follow shortly, so that you can be prepared when the amendments “go live” in July. We will also be hosting a webinar on the subject, which you will not want to miss!
Is California Poised to Be the First State to Outlaw Workplace Bullying? Or Will New York Beat Us to It?
Following an amendment (AB 2053) to the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) that took effect January 1, 2015, California employers that are subject to the mandatory sexual harassment training requirement for supervisors must now include an additional training topic: prevention of “abusive conduct.” Read the text of the bill here.
Readers will recall that existing law (AB 1825, codified at Cal. Gov’t Code § 12950.1) requires employers with 50 or more employees to provide all California supervisory employees with at least two hours of effective interactive training on sexual harassment prevention. New supervisors must be trained within six months of being promoted or hired into a supervisory position and, thereafter, every two years. The required training must include “information and practical guidance” regarding federal and state laws concerning sexual harassment, remedies available to victims of harassment, and practical examples to instruct the supervisors participating in the training. Now, in addition to the previously required topics, employers must include a segment aimed at the prevention of abusive conduct in the workplace.
What does that mean?
Continue Reading A One-Two Punch: New CFRA Regs and Abusive Conduct Training
New guidance on how to comply with the California Family Rights Act (CFRA) is nigh.
On January 13, 2015, the California Fair Employment & Housing Council approved revised regulations interpreting the CFRA, attached here. Procedurally, the regulations now go to the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) for additional consideration and eventual approval. We have it on
Continue Reading COMING IN 2015: REVISED CFRA REGULATIONS, or “How To Comply With Mandatory Family Leaves in the Golden State”
By Jason Allen
Those who spent some time with us last week already know that Bay Area voters took to the polls with an eye toward employees this year. But it wasn’t just with regard to pay. They also ventured into the oh-so-complicated world of sick leave and flexible schedules.
Sick Leave
As we have discussed before, California’s statewide
Continue Reading Bay Area Voters Impose Local Requirements for Minimum Wage, Sick Leave, and Workplace Flexibility: Part 2 of 2
When you dismiss an employee for poor performance, or when he beats you to the punch by quitting on you, you rarely feel the urge to rush that slacker his final check. But you should. Under the California Labor Code, you must pay all wages due at the time of an involuntary termination. And you must
Continue Reading When it comes to paying final wages, ti-i-i-ime is NOT on your side: A Refresher on Labor Code 203
By Nick Geannacopulos and Emily Barker
You have likely noticed that business interactions and the way people communicate professionally have declined in formality over recent years. The “Friday Casual” day has become the casual week. Formal letters have turned into short emails. Even slang has devolved to emoticons and language unheard of in the workplace a decade ago. Navigating through
Continue Reading Managing the Two P’s: Profanity and Politics in the Workplace
