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As corporate profits soar, American workers’ pay keep falling behind. But the movement to increase the minimum wage for American workers has been gaining momentum. In the past year, six states, including California, have raised their minimum wage. Here in California, the minimum wage will go from the current rate of $8 an hour to $9 an hour on July 2, 2014 and to $10 an hour on January 1, 2016. Now, the movement is getting national attention.
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23 Jan '14
How many times have you heard someone coughing, sneezing, and snotting away at work and wondered why they didn’t just stay home? Did you wince every time they coughed? Were you scared of getting sick yourself? Did you get sick? People come in to work while sick for a number of reasons, but for many it is financial: they simply cannot afford to take an unpaid day off work. That may change soon.
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As social media use has become widespread, it has become common practice for employers to search the social media accounts of potential and current employees, and to take action as a result of postings on social media sites. A 2012 CareerBuilder survey found that 37% of employers use social networking sites to research job candidates. They do so to learn more about the candidates, and to determine whether there are reasons not to hire them. Many employers also monitor the social media accounts of their current employees. Depending on how it is done, such monitoring can be unlawful, particularly if an employer is seeking […]
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The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) require accommodations for employees with disabilities. If a qualified employee requests a reasonable accommodation, the employer must provide it unless it “can demonstrate that the accommodation would impose an undue hardship on the operation […]
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2014 will be the year of the whistleblower in California.
Here’s why: On January 1, 2014, new laws (AB 263, SB 496, and SB 666) went into effect that fixed major gaps in Labor Code § 1102.5, the California whistleblower protection law. These are gaps that you probably didn’t even know existed . . . .
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This is another post in my series on mistakes employers make. In this post, I discuss employer leave policies–specifically those that impose maximum leave amounts and “no fault” attendance policies–and why they can end up unlawfully denying employees their rights. While this post covers obligations under both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), I will refer to the ADA only with the understanding that it sets the “floor of protection” under the FEHA (and the FEHA, in fact, affords workers greater protections).
An Inflexible Maximum Leave Policy Violates the ADA
Many employers have “maximum leave” policies, under which employees are automatically terminated. . . .
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Reader, you can help bring paid family and medical leave to Americans throughout the country!
Today, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Representative Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) will introduce the Family and Medical Insurance Leave Act (“FAMILY Act”). If passed, this bill will provide workers throughout the country with up to 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.
In a post I wrote for CELA Voice, . . . .
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10 Dec '13
This is the final post in a four-part series on California’s parental and family care leave laws. In the previous posts, I identified and discussed several barriers that prevent workers from taking time off to bond with new babies and care for sick relatives: lack of information about the law, the lack of job protection, and the financial hardship caused by unpaid leave. In this post, I address what I believe is the trickiest barrier: fear by workers that they will be penalized at work for taking job-protected leave.
A 2012 Department of Labor Survey on the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) found that in a given year, among those protected by the FMLA, approximately 13% of workers took FMLA leave while another 5% of workers . . . .
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The Mizrahi Law Blog wishes all of you a wonderful Thanksgiving (or, Thanksgivukkah if you are celebrating that!).
There are so many reasons to be grateful this year. While many of them are personal to each of us, there is one that all of us should celebrate: the expansion of paid family leave to California workers.
Family leave laws are tremendously important. They allows workers — female and male — to put their families first and take time off to care for them when they are in need. Leave laws are one component in a broader set of laws that protect workers who care for their families, allowing men and women both to lead richer, fuller lives without fear of losing their jobs or being “mommy tracked” or “daddy tracked.” This issue has always been close to my heart, but as a parent myself, it has particular significance. . . .
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You may have seen the photo above making the rounds on the internet. It’s from a Canton, Ohio Wal-Mart store where management put out bins for workers to donate food to other workers for Thanksgiving dinner. In “Giving thanks: A luxury that Wal-Mart workers can’t afford,” a blog post written for CELA Voice, Sharon Vinick and I discuss why this photo is so significant. . . .
