On the heels of the New York and FTC non-competition legislation (discussed here and here), Governor Newsom recently signed an amendment to California’s non-compete ban into law. The amendment, S.B. 699, takes effect on...more
9/19/2023
/ Amended Legislation ,
CA Supreme Court ,
California ,
Enforcement ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Injunctive Relief ,
Labor Code ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Non-Solicitation Agreements ,
Restrictive Covenants ,
Retroactive Application
The recent Wall Street Journal piece about the use of online dating apps for employment networking explored what happens when people in the relationship marketplace leverage dating apps for career development. It makes sense...more
The recent Wall Street Journal article about the Supreme Court's affirmative action decision and its potential to chill corporate diversity efforts suggests that the decision has fueled an organized attack on corporate...more
Today's Wall Street Journal featured not one but two articles addressing jerky behavior at work. The first article addressed the extremes of people management: the supervisor who approaches business in a “nice” manner risks...more
The California Supreme Court has closed the door on the employer-friendly rule the U.S. Supreme Court set out in the case of Viking River Cruises Inc. v. Moriana. There, the Supreme Court held that employees could waive their...more
7/26/2023
/ Arbitration ,
CA Supreme Court ,
California ,
Employer Liability Issues ,
Employment Litigation ,
Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) ,
SCOTUS ,
Standing ,
Uber ,
Viking River Cruises ,
Viking River Cruises Inc v Moriana
If 20% of Americans currently live with mental illness as the National Institute of Mental Health reports, and 60% of American adults are working as the Bureau of Labor Statistics tells us, then managing mental health and...more
A few months ago, we wrote about the NLRB General Counsel's opinion that some non-disparagement and confidentiality provisions in employment agreements potentially interfered with employees' NLRA Section 7 rights. That...more
The recent report about the hybrid working environment's negative impact on career development tells us that personal interaction impacts learning. The value of in-person interaction -- and the instant feedback that comes...more
Today's Wall Street Journal story about the CEO whose "Pity City" comments provoked outrage after a viral TikTok premiere is yet another cautionary tale about the instant infamy social media brings to an employer's gaffes. ...more
The NLRB's decision addressing non-disparagement provisions and its General Counsel's recent follow-on advisory about the scope of that decision demand the attention of businesses that routinely employ these provisions. ...more
Employers with SVB accounts face a serious predicament with an imminent and urgent need to make payroll. Given the potential liabilities that result from missed wage payments, there are some steps employers can take now to...more
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently struck down a California law that prohibited employers from mandating the arbitration of workplace disputes. This puts arbitration back in play in California for most employment...more
Layoffs may lead the news cycle these days but what may be lost in the digital dilemma of mass terminations is the utility of information that exiting employees might provide. Employers may think that a departing employee has...more
The recent New York Times piece about the chaos arising from terminating remote workers highlights the difficulties employers face when laying off a distributed workforce of digital workers. Few employers are able to deliver...more
California’s pay transparency law became effective on January 1, 2023, though it was lacking clarity on some key items at the time of its passage. Our previous advisory describing the new law, its requirements, and its...more
Today's news about the Federal Trade Commission's proposal to ban or severely limit non-compete agreements simply moves what has long been a focus of state regulation to the Federal level. Many states (Massachusetts, Colorado...more
Today's news about Twitter's sale and the tidying up of its executive suite highlights a little-discussed and poorly understood compensation practice: the retention bonus. A key feature in the mergers and acquisition context,...more
California has now joined New York City and Colorado in requiring employers (for Golden State employers, of 15 or more) to publish “pay scales” in job postings. As with many things California, however, the new law (which...more
California joined the ranks of statutory pay transparency when Governor Newsom signed a bill into law that requires California employers (of 15 or more) to publicize the pay scale for any advertised positions. The new law,...more
On September 27, 2022, Governor Newsom signed SB 1162 (the “Act”) into law, which aligns California with a growing national trend mandating pay transparency in the workplace. The Act will impose new requirements on many...more
9/29/2022
/ Bureau of Labor Statistics ,
California ,
Civil Monetary Penalty ,
EEO-1 ,
Governor Newsom ,
Job Applicants ,
NAICS ,
Pay Data ,
Pay Transparency ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Salary/Wage History
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that performance reviews are back after a period of "benign neglect' that featured management's focus on other things (like a worldwide pandemic, an overnight distributed workforce,...more
Quiet quitting continues to dominate the headlines. Today's report in the Wall Street Journal features a Gallup study that suggests nearly half of American workers are "psychologically detached" from their jobs. This study...more
Today's Wall Street Journal piece about the "quiet quitting" backlash raises some good points about workplace performance management. For those not in the know, "quiet quitting" is the decision by some workers to do just...more
Earlier this year we wrote on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Viking River Cruises, Inc. v. Moriana that struck a major blow to California’s Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”). Now on the heels of the Viking River...more
Today's New York Times article about funky pandemic-driven job titles ("Chief Heart Officer" "Head of Dynamic Work" and "Vice President of Flexible Work" to name a few) highlighted some new roles the pandemic has stimulated....more