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Yet another dramatic punitive damage award shows how juries can render potentially devastating employment-related verdicts. We previously reported on a pending lawsuit by 21 African-American workers at Northern California Wonder Bread bakeries for race discrimination. Now the verdict is in, and a San Francisco jury has awarded $11 million in compensatory damages and a whopping […]
The proposed San Francisco ordinance protecting applicants and employees from discrimination based on weight and height, which we recently covered, has been formally approved and is now in effect. The law applies to every employer in the city with six or more workers. It also covers all employers—no matter where they’re located—who have contracts with […]
In the March 1998 issue of California Employer Advisor, we reviewed a decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal focusing on alleged secret genetic testing of employees at the University of California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The court held that the workers could sue the lab for violating their privacy rights. Now the lab has […]
A former Los Angeles police officer sued the city for improperly disclosing his personnel files in the course of a lawsuit accusing him of sexual misconduct with an underage police Explorer Scout. The court ruled that even if Los Angeles failed to follow the strict laws limiting disclosure of police personnel files, the officer had […]
In a confidential settlement, a Los Angeles bottled water distributor agreed to resolve a class action lawsuit by paying $4 million to workers who said they were not paid overtime because they were improperly designated as exempt outside sales employees. The workers claimed they were actually delivery drivers, despite their job title of “route sales […]
The Industrial Welfare Commission has adopted several important new rules that will have a significant impact on California employers. One big change requires you to pay employees for an additional hour if they work through a break or meal period. The story also outlines the IWC’s new requirements for adopting and repealing alternative workweeks to […]
As a result of a new decision by the National Labor Relations Board, investigating complaints of harassment or other employee misconduct is likely to become more complex. The NLRB recently ruled that nonunion employers must allow employees to bring a co-worker to so-called investigatory interviews. The rule applies to any interview in which employees will […]
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that the number of cases involving sexual harassment and retaliation is increasing. Retaliationclaims, the fastest-growing type of complaint filed with the EEOC, have gone up more than 77% between 1992 and 1999. A total of 11,096 retaliation charges were filed in 1992, but by 1999, the number had jumped […]
Under a revised proposal by the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council, companies would have to certify that they are in compliance with a broad range of federal laws to contract with the federal government. This new version of a rule proposed in 1999 clarifies the existing requirement that federal contractors have a satisfactory record of “integrity […]
A 29-year manager with Vons who contended she was wrongfully demoted because of her sex was awarded $5.2 million by an Orange County jury. Lynn Rayburn claimed that Vons appointed a new district manager who said there were “too damn many women in the district” and made other disparaging gender-related remarks. Rayburn had been in […]