News
California Bill Aims to Increase Penalties for Employer Wage Theft (Senate Bill 261)
In an effort to combat wage theft and improve enforcement in Santa Clara County and across California, State Senator Aisha Wahab (D-Hayward) introduced Senate Bill 261 (SB 261) in February 2025. Sponsored by the County of Santa Clara, the proposed legislation seeks to enhance legal mechanisms for workers seeking to recover unpaid wages and impose…
Read MoreCalifornia Bill Seeks Stronger Enforcement Against Wage Theft (Senate Bill 355)
In February 2025, a bill introduced in the California Senate aims to strengthen enforcement against employers who fail to pay workers their legally owed wages. Senate Bill 355 (SB 355), authored by Senator Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), would grant the California Labor Commissioner’s Office (LCO) the authority to suspend or revoke driver’s licenses and vehicle…
Read MoreProposed Law Seeks to Give Employees a Better Alternative to the Backlogged Labor Board (Senate Bill 310)
In February of 2025, California State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) introduced SB 310, a bill aimed at improving workers’ recovery of penalties when employers pay their wages late or not at all in violation of Labor Code section 210. Currently, workers can recover those penalties only by filing either wage claims with the Labor…
Read MoreReports Show Rampant California Wage Violations and Poor Enforcement by State Agencies
The Harvard-UCSF Report The Harvard Kennedy School and the University of California at San Francisco have issued a report that shows rampant wage violations occurring in California workplaces. A copy of the report can be downloaded here. Some highlights from the report: The report concludes that while California boasts some of the most progressive labor…
Read MoreMinimum Wage Goes Up for California Healthcare Workers (Senate Bill 525)
Senate Bill 525 is a legislative measure that enhances the protections for healthcare workers, especially those who are on-call or on standby. This bill is designed to ensure that healthcare professionals are fairly compensated for the periods when they are required to be available to work, even if they are not actually called in to…
Read MoreUS Supreme Court Says Class Actions Can Be Banned
Have you ever sat down and read the “fine print”? That long, boring document with tiny print that falls out of the box of whatever you just bought? Me neither. But maybe we all should from now on. In AT&T Mobility LLC v. Concepcion et ux., AT&T had charged consumers $30.22 for phones that they…
Read MoreLos Angeles Courthouses Face Closure: Expect Big Delays
According to an article in the Pasadena Star News, “L.A. County Superior Court faces budget ax; nine courthouses could close”, up to 9 of Los Angeles County’s 50 courthouses may be closed due to
Read MoreShould Workers Be Paid for Answering Emails After Hours? (2026)
In today’s high-tech world, a constant connection to the web and phone comes at a price for workers: all too often, the office comes home with you. A Pew Internet & American Life Project 2008 study entitled “Networked Workers: Most Workers Use the Internet or Email at their Jobs, but They Say These Technologies are…
Read MoreGoogle Offers Caselaw…for FREE
Today Google announced the launch of a free federal and state caselaw database that is lightning fast and extremely powerful. It can be found at the “legal opinions and journals” section of Google Scholar.
Read MoreEmployers Are Now Screening Employee Facebook and MySpace Pages
Do you have a personal account with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or any of the other social media websites that have become so popular lately? Chances are you do. Or you will soon. The growth of social media sites has been nothing short of breathtaking. Here are a few statistics:
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