California Fair Employment and Housing Act requires employers to make reasonable accommodations for workers with a disability. Yet, as every employee and every company is different, it can be hard to pin down how far this goes. Making accommodations can cost time and...
Year: 2022
Can your employer tell you to straighten your hair?
If you are Black, you may well have come across employers who took exception to your hairstyles. They may have expressed it directly or subtly, but the message was clear: They wanted you to change your hair to conform to their standards. The problem is those standards...
3 ways companies violate your right to overtime pay
California state law and federal employment regulations protect the right of hourly workers and some salaried employees to receive overtime wages when they work long hours. California extends more comprehensive overtime protections to workers than the federal...
How soon should you get your final check in California?
You spent the last few months feeling like it was time to go in a new direction with your career. When you finally went in to tell your employer that you were quitting, it certainly wasn't news to you. But your employer didn't take it as well as you'd hoped. They...
Can you be discriminated against for being a young worker?
You may know that age discrimination in the workplace is prohibited. At its heart, this just means that employers are not supposed to hire or fire someone based exclusively on their age. This was done, in part, to protect older workers from being phased out of the...
Supreme Court deals a blow to unique California labor law
With all the controversial decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in the final weeks of its term, an 8-1 decision on a California labor law case got comparatively little attention. The high court ruled that private lawsuits representing a group of employees...
Can your employer discipline you for refusing overtime?
There are laws at the federal level that protect workers from mistreatment by employers, and California also has numerous state laws that expand on those federal protections. The right to overtime pay helps ensure that workers who have to put in more than the typical...
Can your employer demand a long notice before you leave?
There was recently a story making the rounds on social media about a company that had three of its employees put in their two weeks’ notice relatively close together. This was a burden for the business, so the owner said that all employees in the future would have to...
How to confront a boss that’s bullying you
It’s likely that you spend most of your week in the workplace. Thus, it’s vital that this environment is safe and that you feel comfortable. Unfortunately, things don’t always work out this way. People can go out of their way to make your working life as difficult as...
Can your employer ask you to pick something up before work?
Imagine that you work at a warehouse, in the shipping and receiving department. Every day, you help to ship products from the warehouse to customers who ordered them online. But your business has another location, and orders sometimes go through that warehouse. They...