Governor Edmund G. Brown vetoed a California Chamber of Commerce-opposed bill, AB 889 (Ammiano; D-San Francisco), which would have provided the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) with authority to develop regulations placing wage-and-hour mandates on working families.
AB 889 would have required the DIR to adopt regulations no later than January 2014 for “domestic work employees,” which the bill generally defined as any individual who performs “domestic work” such as housekeeping, child care and other “household occupations.”
The bill would have required the regulations to include provisions addressing overtime compensation, meal and rest periods and sleep periods, or to simply adopt the regulations set forth in Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Order No. 15.
Tags: Department of Industrial Relations, AB 889, domestic work, household occupations, nanny bill, nanny break bill, HR Allen Consulting Services, HR Informant, wage and hour
The state Labor Commissioner announced the creation of a Criminal Investigation Unit (CIU) to target employers who perpetrate “wage theft.”
Generally, “wage theft” is a phrase used to refer to infractions of the California Labor Code involving the payment of wages to workers. Wage theft might refer to employers who fail to pay for all hours worked, fail to pay nonexempt employees overtime, fail to pay minimum wage or fail to properly classify workers as employees and report them to the various state and federal agencies.
According to Labor Commissioner Julie Su, the new criminal unit “will be tasked with leveling the playing field for California employers by raising the stakes for those who underpay, underbid and under-report in violation of the law.”
Tags: employee rights, CA min wage, California labor board, California labor laws overtime, California overtime pay, employees rights, Equal pay for equal work, exempt employee, fair labor, nonexempt employee, overtime pay laws, Salary requirements, wage theft prevention, California Labor Code, HR Allen Consulting Services, unfair labor practices, wage and hour
For the past two years or so, perhaps the most anticipated rulemaking in the wage and hour world has been what has been described at various times as the "FLSA Recordkeeping" or "Right-to-Know" rulemaking. As we have discussed previously on the blog, this expected regulation immediately drew the concern of the employer community when it was reported that it would require employers to prepare a written analysis of an employee’s exempt status under the FLSA, provide a copy of that analysis to the employee, and maintain a copy of that analysis for review by a Department of Labor Wage & Hour Division investigator. More recent descriptions call that initial report into question, but the concern remained.
Tags: misclassification, Department of Labor, exemptions, FLSA, wage and hour
UPDATE: On January 3, 2012, the Labor Commissioner changed the FAQs on this notice requirement to clarify that the notice does not need to be given to current employees except under certain circumstances. The Labor Commissioner did so by simply deleting the following sentence formerly in the answer to FAQ 2: “The notice should be given to all current employees and then to all new employees at the time of hire.”
Tags: California Labor Code, California Employment laws 2012, New CA Employment Laws 2012, New California Employment Laws 2012, wage and hour, 2012 California Laws