Oregon’s new minimum wage law, signed by Governor Brown on March 2, 2016, received a lot of press during the 2016 legislative session.  This new law establishes a tiered system for determination of the minimum wage based on the location of the employer.  The minimum wage will increase annually on July 1 of each year, with the first increase (from $9.25 to $9.50 in rural areas and to $9.75 everywhere else) taking place this year.  By 2022, Oregon’s minimum wage will increase to $14.75 inside Portland’s urban growth boundary, $13.50 in midsize counties, and $12.50 in rural areas. The full text of the enrolled Senate bill is available here.

With minimum wage receiving all of the attention, Oregon employers may have missed other employment-related bills.  Here are the bills that passed during the 2016 Oregon Legislative Session and those that failed (but we might see again in the future).
Continue Reading 2016 Oregon Legislative Update: What You Might Have Missed

On May 2, 2016, The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the legal challenge to the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance’s impact on Seattle franchisees (IFA v. Seattle–denial of cert).  We have blogged about Seattle’s Minimum Wage Ordinance (“Ordinance”) before. The Ordinance requires large businesses, defined as those with more than 500 employees, to…

Fans of unscrupulous professional football players and coaches often justify their heroes’ misbehavior with a now-classic sports adage: “If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’.”  In the 1970s, for example, legendary Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis allegedly bugged locker rooms, watered down fields, and spied on other teams using a helicopter.  Such extreme shenanigans are…

A recent California Supreme Court decision has the potential to affect all California employees who are required to stand while performing parts of their job.  In response to numerous lawsuits brought by cashiers, retail employees, bank tellers and other employees, the California Supreme Court clarified the meaning of a decades-old law that requires employers to provide their employees with “suitable seats” when the nature of the work permits it.  The Court rejected the interpretation favored by employers—creating instead an interpretation that will make it more difficult for employers to deny their employees a seat.

As a result of this decision, California companies must give careful consideration to whether their employees can perform any of their tasks while sitting.  Employers who fail to provide seats when the nature of the work would reasonably permit their use face significant penalties.

Suitable Seating Laws

Different variations of seating laws have been in place in California since 1911.  The current language dates back to 1976, when the Industrial Welfare Commission modified a wage order to require that “all working employees shall be provided with suitable seats when the nature of the work reasonably permits the use of seats.”  The wage order also requires that “when employees are not engaged in the active duties of their employment and the nature of the work requires standing, an adequate number of suitable seats shall be placed in reasonable proximity to the work area and employees shall be permitted to use such seats when it does not interfere with the performance of their duties.”
Continue Reading California Employers Must Carefully Reconsider Whether Employees Can Be Provided With “Suitable Seats” In Light of New Decision

Walt Disney had himself cryogenically frozen.  Alligators are alive and well in the NYC sewer system.  You’ll die if you eat a whole bag of Pop Rocks and polish it off with a can of Coke.  2016 was the weirdest primary election season ever . . . oh, wait.  That one’s true.

Human resources has its share of myths.  Here we try to debunk some of the more common ones.

  1. As long as I pay my employee a salary, I don’t have to pay her overtime.

Wrong.  Federal law requires application of both a salary test and a duties test to determine whether an employee is exempt from overtime requirements.  In other words, to be exempt, an employee must be paid a minimum salary and have a certain type of job.  Typically, these are known as the “white collar” exemptions.  Most states have similar requirements.  Employers who misclassify employees are sitting ducks for a class action suit over overtime wages and break and meal periods.

You should also be aware that before President Obama leaves office, the Department of Labor is likely to issue new rules raising the salary requirement for exempt status to over $50,000 per year.  The new rules may also make some changes to the definitions of white collar workers.  Employers should keep an eye out for these new rules because they will present an opportunity to review whether employees are properly classified.
Continue Reading HR Urban Legends

As we’ve previously blogged, for several years the Obama Administration has been on a calculated campaign to increase unionization in America. Federal agencies, particularly that National Labor Relations Board, have been systematically changing longstanding rules to make it more likely that unions can prevail in election representation campaigns.  We previously blogged about two earlier key components of this campaign: the revised rules from the NLRB approving “quickie” union elections on dramatically shortened time frames; and even earlier efforts to allow unions to designate “micro-units,” increasingly small groups of employees so that unions may narrowly focus their organizing efforts.  Now, in the twilight of the Obama Administration, the final effort in the campaign to increase unionization has just been announced: the Department of Labor has finally issued its long threatened regulations that would dramatically narrow the scope of confidential advice employers can receive when dealing with union organizing campaigns.
Continue Reading The Third Shoe Drops: The Department of Labor Issues Revised “Advice” Regulations

After heated debate between legislators and among the business community, the Utah state legislature has passed HB 251, the Post-Employment Restrictions Act.  As passed, the Act prohibits “post-employment restrictive covenants” with restrictive periods longer than one year.  The Act defines a “post-employment restrictive covenant” (also identified in the statute as a “covenant not to compete” or “non compete agreement”) as

an agreement, written or oral, between an employer and employee under which the employee agrees that the employee, either alone or as an employee of another person, will not compete with the employer in providing products, processes, or services that are similar to the employer’s products, processes, or services.

The Act prohibits employers and employees from entering into post-employment restrictive covenants of more than one year and declares such agreements void.  The Act specifically requires that non-competition must comply with other requirements for enforceability that have developed under common law.  Finally, the Act provides that employers who unsuccessfully attempt to enforce such agreements are liable for actual damages, court or arbitration costs, and attorney fees.
Continue Reading Utah Passes Bill Regulating Non-Competes

The Utah Legislature has passed SB 59, which amends the Utah Antidiscrimination Act to provide additional protections for pregnant and breastfeeding women in the workplace.

This law requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to employees upon request for conditions related to pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding, unless doing so would create an “undue hardship.”  Employers are…

In Oregon Rest. & Lodging Ass’n v. Perez, the Ninth Circuit ruled this week that federal law restricts a restaurant employer from maintaining a tip pool that includes “back-of-the-house” employees and requires directly tipped employees to share their tips, regardless of whether a tip credit is taken and employees are paid at least minimum wage.

The FLSA permits an employer to count a tipped employee’s tips toward its hourly minimum wage obligation.  This is known as a “tip credit.”  Section 203(m) of the FLSA requires employers who take a tip credit to give notice to employees and allow employees to retain all of the tips they receive, unless such employees participate in a valid tip pool.  Under section 203(m), a tip pool is valid if it is comprised exclusively of employees who are “customarily and regularly” tipped, commonly referred to as “front-of-the-house” employees.

The employers in Oregon Rest. & Lodging Ass’n, however, did not take a tip credit against their minimum wage obligation.  (Indeed, Oregon does not permit a “tip credit,” and requires that all employees receive the state-mandated minimum wage.)  Rather, the employers in Oregon Rest. & Lodging Ass’n paid their tipped employees at least the federal minimum wage and required their employees to participate in tip pools.  Unlike the tip pools contemplated by section 203(m), however, these tip pools included both front- and back-of-the-house employees.Continue Reading Ninth Circuit Declares Tip Pools Invalid Under FLSA Even Where Employers Pay More Than Minimum Wage