Practical HR Tips, News & Advice. Updated Daily.
“Drug testing of private sector employees and applicants in California implicates the right of privacy set forth in Article 1, Section 1 of the California Constitution.” Marc Jacuzzi told us in a recent CER webinar. “That is where individual employee rights lie for private employers.” But what about safety concerns? Do they trump privacy concerns?
Yesterday, we looked at a recent case addressing the question of whether wage rates on public works projects are considered a “municipal affair” and not subject to California’s prevailing wage law. Today, the California Supreme Court’s ruling on the issue—plus a newly updated wage/hour resource specifically for California employers.
On Tuesday, the California Supreme Court upheld the November amendment to the state constitution—Prop 8—that prohibits same-sex marriage. The court did, however, rule that the 18,000+ same-sex marriages already performed in California will remain legally valid.
We are seeing a need to engage in more intensive monitoring and surveillance of our employees’ tech equipment use. I want to get a new draft policy circulating. What should I include?— Sally E., HR Manager in Sausalito
We’ve never had any rules about decorating personal workspaces and never had any problems. But recently, some issues have come up and I think we need a policy. For example, an employee reported that a valuable item was stolen from her desk while she was at a meeting. Another employee complained about a swimsuit calendar […]
We’ve got some situations brewing concerning moonlighting. We have a few employees who are working during their off hours for a company that competes with us indirectly, and we have a few others who we believe are missing work due to jobs elsewhere. We also have a few who are obviously pretty tired—again, we think […]
We think that drug use in our company might be growing, and management wants to institute a broad, random testing policy with a zero-tolerance standard. I believe that random testing might be a privacy violation in California. Is it advisable to have a random testing policy, and if not, what do you recommend for curbing […]
A workers’ compensation claim is typically the only remedy for an employee who gets injured on the job. But a California Court of Appeal recently ruled that an employee injured because a supervisor didn’t keep the person’s disciplinary matters private may bypass the workers’ comp system and sue you for damages.
Frederick Phillips, a social worker for St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in San Bernardino County, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit charging the nonprofit religious corporation with race and sex bias and retaliation. A California Court of Appeal has given Phillips the go-ahead to pursue his lawsuit ruling that although the Fair Employment and Housing Act […]
Employers affiliated with a religion generally aren’t subject to the state Fair Employment and Housing Act, California’s anti-discrimination law. But in a new case, a California Court of Appeal allowed a worker to make an end run around the statute and sue an employer who was exempt from the FEHA for religious discrimination. We’ll explain […]