An age discrimination lawsuit against the city of Milpitas near San Jose was settled recently for more than a half million dollars. The plaintiff also reportedly was offered a new job within the city. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the settlement for $600,000 was to cover back pay and…
Almost all gender discrimination lawsuits in California are filed by women. It’s well-established that women as a whole are offered less prestigious jobs, are paid less, promoted less and are targeted more frequently for sexual harassment. So is it ever valid for a male employee to file a gender discrimination…
Much has been written about the lack of gender diversity in Silicon Valley. The problem has even birthed a few California employment lawsuits, with varied results. Most notable among those was the case of Ellen Pao, a junior partner, against her former employer and powerhouse venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield…
A California employment lawsuit against ride-sharing service Lyft was settled with an interesting compromise. Workers involved in the class-action lawsuit asserted they were in fact employees, entitled to all the legal protections that entails. However, the mobile app argued the drivers were independent contractors, meaning they wouldn’t be entitled to…
According to a recent news article from HR.BLR.com, an employee was driving his personal vehicle when he was arrested and charged with drunk driving in California. At the time of his arrest, he was working for a major insurance carrier as a claims handler. Two weeks after his arrest, employer…
According to recent news feature from HR.BLR.com, a California employer operates a shipping, distribution, and warehousing business at ports in Southern California, including Los Angeles and Long Beach. The company accepts the shipments at the docks, stores the merchandise, and then has its drivers deliver the goods throughout the state…
If you have never waited tables, you probably do not understand how servers get paid and why tips are very important. In 43 states in the nation, restaurant workers get paid far less than minimum. While the federal minimum wage is $7.25, an employee at restaurant waiting tables probably makes…
According to a recent news article from the Sacramento Bee, the United States Supreme Court held oral arguments on the issue of whether a public union could force employees in a particular sector to pay dues as a mandatory condition of employment. Specifically, this case at issue is Friedrichs v.…
If a worker is classified as an independent contractor, then by the classification’s very nature, the worker is not an employee. In many industries there is a lot of worker misclassification. One of the biggest industries with worker misclassification problems is the construction industry, and, in California, there are a…
According to a recent news article from Capital Public Radio, a new law has taken effect in the state of California that is designed to protect workers who need to take off time from work to handle a school emergency with their children or to enroll the child in daycare…