Freelance journalists may soon be exempted from the controversial Assembly Bill 5, which went into effect Jan. 1st. The new law codified the California Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dynamex case, which established an “ABC test” for ascertaining whether workers are misclassified as independent contractors when in fact they should…
The 1963 Equal Pay Act mandates that employers must provide equal pay for equal work. The express purpose was to eliminate the practice of paying women less simply because of their gender. The law does allow employers to offer an affirmative defense to the law if they can show that…
A number of civil rights and employment lawsuits filed over the last handful of years have accused fashion industry powerhouses of discriminating against workers on the basis of race. Among them, two employees at high-end retail shops in California say they were treated poorly by management because of their race, and…
A recently-filed California workplace discrimination lawsuit alleges a former supervisor at Amazon ordered an employee to scour the social media platforms of job applicants, looking for information on their gender, ethnicity and race. When the employee raised concern about this (as well as the fact that she reportedly earned significantly…
Discrimination in the hiring process has long been problematic in California workplaces. Allowing personal biases of employers and supervisors to play a role in who gets the job and who doesn’t is extremely problematic when the effect is systematic discrimination against applicants on the basis of their race, religion, age,…
Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg recently vowed to release former female employees from the non-disclosure agreements they signed in connection with their sexual harassment lawsuit settlements at his namesake company. The announcement came just days after Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren slammed Bloomberg over the agreements during the Democratic presidential…
As fears of the highly-contagious and potentially fatal coronavirus continue to spread, authorities have imposed numerous drastic measures and quarantine actions, from keeping passengers for weeks on a cruise ship to canceling classes for Japanese school children for the rest of the year. Some factories in Vietnam were forced to…
A for-profit nursing home chain operating dozens of facilities in several states (including California) has agreed to pay $2 million and implement other corrective measures after being sued for disability discrimination. Local media report that at the heart of the case were strict hiring and leave policies that unfairly affected…
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has launched an investigation into an alleged case of pregnancy discrimination stemming from a former employee’s memo that went viral last year. The memo, titled, “I’m Not Returning to Google After Maternity Leave, and Here is Why, My Story of Retaliation and Discrimination…
A survey of foreign H-1B visa holders working at tech industry employers like Apple, Lyft and Samsung say they’ve been subjected to a significant degree of workplace discrimination ever since the Trump administration made it tougher to qualify for the visas. Visa holders say they are assigned to working conditions…