Santa Monica adopted an ordinance in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks requiring employers to offer to rehire workers who had six months or more of prior employment with the employer and whose most recent employment was terminated due to lack of business, a reduction in force or other, economic, non-disciplinary reason. This decision holds that the plaintiff could not… Read More
Smith was employed by Jiffy Lube. Fifty Jiffy Lube employees including Smith and his supervisors attended a meeting at which Pumerol, a BP representative, provided information on the company's new product and how it should be used in Jiffy Lube's work. During the meeting Pumerol made three derogatory comments about Smith, an African-American, including a reference to his "Banana Hands/" … Read More
This decision affirms an order denying class certification on a claim that See's did not give its employees a second meal break when they worked for 10 hours or more a day. See's had a written policy requiring a second meal break in those circumstances, but plaintiff claimed that See's routinely failed to follow that policy in practice. Time records… Read More
For an association to have standing to sue for its members, it must show that (a) its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right; (b) the interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization's purpose; and (c) neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit. … Read More
Disagreeing with Villacorta v. Cemex Cement, Inc. (2013) 221 Cal.App.4th 1425, this decision holds that income a wrongfully terminated employee earns from another job after termination must be subtracted from her past economic damages for the wrongful termination whether or not the subsequent employment was not comparable or substantially similar to the job that was wrongfully terminated. The comparable or… Read More
Following Contreras v. Superior Court (2021) 61 Cal.App.5th 461 and Provost v. YourMechanic, Inc. (2020) 55 Cal.App.5th 982, this decision holds that even when the arbitration agreement delegates arbitrability issues to the arbitrator, a plaintiff bringing a PAGA claim cannot be compelled to arbitrate the threshold issue of whether she is an "employee" with standing to bring a PAGA claim… Read More
The gist of a teacher's FEHA claim for retaliation for filing a complaint with the DFEH was the defendant's adverse employment action, not the protected activity of the investigation it conducted leading up to that action or its later protected action of defending the adverse employment action before a review commission. Accordingly, the case did not arise from conduct protected… Read More
AB-5 which codifies the ABC test of employee status is a generally applicable labor law that affects a motor carrier’s relationship with its workforce but does not bind, compel, or otherwise freeze into place the prices, routes, or services of motor carriers, we conclude that it is not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994 (49 USC… Read More
The IWC's wage orders setting minimum wages and the method of calculating hours of work for purposes of paying minimum wages do not apply to the University of California which is not a political subdivision of the state and does not otherwise fall within the definition of a public employer under Wage Order No. 4. Instead, the University is a… Read More
Using the website of the administrator hired by Northrup Grumman to manage its pension plan, plaintiffs submitted requests for the administrator to tell them the monthly pension benefit they would receive if they retired on a certain date. The administrator miscalculated the benefit because it used the requesters' wages during their second period of employment by Northrup Grumman rather than… Read More
Older 9th Circuit decisions hold that while statutory employment discrimination claims under Title VII and similar laws are arbitrable, there must be a showing that the employee knowingly waived his right to a jury trial of such claims. In this decision, the court holds that even if the "knowing waiver" standard is still good law, it was satisfied in this… Read More
Section 105(c) of the federal Mine Safety and Health Act (30 U.S.C. § 815(c)) prohibits an employer from taking adverse action against an employee "because of" the employee's reporting a violation of the Act or seeking benefits under it. Following the Supreme Court's decisions in Bostock v. Clayton Cnty., 140 S.Ct. 1731, 1739 (2020) and other recent cases, this decision… Read More
Kaiser adequately proved that Kuntz's decedent enrolled with Kaiser under a CalPERS medical insurance plan which included an arbitration clause. Kaiser showed that CalPERS keeps the individual enrollment forms, just sending Kaiser electronic enrollment information. Kaiser's electronic enrollment information showed that Kuntz's decedent had been enrolled in the Kaiser health plan continuously since 1983. Kaiser was not required to show… Read More
A collective bargaining agreement will not be interpreted to require arbitration of statutory wage and hour claims unless the agreement clearly and unmistakably requires arbitration of those claims. Here, the CBA did not meet that standard. It required arbitration of only those issues that the union and employer later agreed to arbitrate. Also, litigation of the statutory wage and hour… Read More
Following SEIU Local 121RN v. Los Robles Regional Medical Center (9th Cir. 2020) 976 F.3d 849, this decision holds that, at least with respect to delegation of arbitrability questions to the arbitrator, arbitration clauses in collective bargaining agreements are to be interpreted just like arbitration clauses in other types of contracts. Arbitrability questions are determined by the court unless the… Read More
NLRA section 301 completely preempts state law claims that implicate a collective-bargaining agreement or an agreement between labor organizations, except for claims that (1) arise independently of the agreement, and (2) don’t substantially depend on analysis of the agreement. Here, union members of a Nevada local sued to challenge the national union's placing the local into trusteeship. The union members'… Read More
Following Vazquez v. Jan-Pro Franchising Internat., Inc. (2021) 10 Cal.5th 944, this decision holds that Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court (2018) 4 Cal.5th 903 and its ABC test for determining whether a worker or an independent contractor applies retroactively. And, following People v. Superior Court (Cal Cartage Transportation Express, LLC) (2020) 57 Cal.App.5th 619, it also holds that… Read More
Following Nieto v. Fresno Beverage Co., Inc. (2019) 33 Cal.App.5th 274, this decision holds that workers for a company 90% of whose business was providing "last mile" transportation of goods from Amazon warehouses to Amazon customers were employees in interstate commerce and thus exempt from the FAA. Though the workers themselves did not cross state lines, they represented the final… Read More
Employees of a private firm who, under the firm's contract with the district, sorted recyclables from a conveyor belt at a county sanitary district-owned facility were employed to perform "public work" to which the prevailing wage law applied. Lab. Code 1720(a)(2) defines public work to include work done for irrigation, utility and other similar districts. This work for the sanitary… Read More
Under the Displaced Janitor Opportunity Act (Lab. Code 1060 et seq.) a successor janitorial company must hire the janitorial workers of a predecessor company at the same site for at least 60 days after taking over the site, but need not hire the predecessor's managerial, supervisory or confidential employees. This decision affirms a decision for the successor janitorial company, holding… Read More
