Posted on January 20th, 2020
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
What’s happening, fellow entrepreneurs? It’s John Fagerholm again. It’s the middle of December 2019, and there’s a ton of new laws that are going to come into effect in 2020 that have some serious ramifications against employers, both in liability from lawsuits but also in costs.
So I’m going to spend the rest of the month trying to specifically address each one that I think has the biggest effect on employers.
However, for this video, I just want to go through what they are just very quickly, so that if people on their own want to look up some of these laws, they can.
All right, well, let me start here. The first one I want to talk about is SB-1300 which is a law regarding harassment, discrimination, and and so on. The gist of SB 1300 is that it makes numerous changes to the FEHA, which is California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act.
Notably, it makes it unlawful for an employer to require an employee, in exchange for a raise or bonus or as a condition of employment or continued employment, to agree not to sue or bring claim against the employee under FEHA, and also to make it a condition of employment or raise to sign a non-disparagement or other type of agreement against an employer if it’s related to unlawful acts in the workplace, such as sexual harassment. Okay, so that’s SB-1300.
Next is SB-1343, which is sexual harassment training. What that does is by January 1, 2020, it requires employers with five or more employees to provide two hours of sexual harassment training for supervisory staff and one hour of training for the rest of the staff.
That’s an important one and I’ll focus on that one in a separate video.
Next, we have SB-820, which is prohibition of confidentiality clauses in settlement agreements. This one really bugs me because that’s what a settlement agreement is for.
You’re not admitting that you did anything wrong, you’re just saying, “Hey, I’d rather settle this,” but anyway. What SB-820 does is it prohibits a settlement agreement from including a confidentiality provision that prevents the disclosure of factual information pertaining to civil or administrative complaints of sexual assault, sexual harassment, or workplace harassment, or discrimination based on sex.
I have a really big urge to just really go on about this one, but I’ll make a separate video on this. This one is just absolutely ridiculous, number one, and really puts employers in harms way.
All right, now let’s move on to, excuse me, AB-3109, which is a banning waivers of a right to testify. This one I don’t see as being too complicated or too burdensome on employers, because it’s just basically saying that you can’t have an agreement with your employer that they can’t testify.
I don’t know that that wasn’t already the law to begin with anyway.
Let’s see, next is AB-2770, which is defamation protection for those that are claiming harassment. This one’s a little burdensome also because … Well, I won’t get into it.
But basically if someone accuses you of a harassment and you weren’t the harasser, I think you should be able to file a suit for defamation, but this limits and restricts that.
Okay, here’s a good one that affects attorneys and other professionals. SB-224 expands the list of what a professional relationship is.
Basically, if you have a professional relationship with someone, even if they’re not your employee, it could be considered sexual harassment depending if all the other elements of sexual harassment fit. In this case it just expands that list of who they are.
Let’s see, then we have AB-2338 which is sexual harassment education materials and training for talent agencies. I won’t get into that. That’s pretty self-explanatory. AB-3082 is the next one and it’s a sexual harassment training for in supportive services employers. I think this is more government related, so I won’t get into that.
AB-2079, sexual violence and harassment prevention training for janitorial services providers. This is linked to their license basically. They’ve got to provide certain amounts of sexual harassment training for their licensing.
Okay, SB-826. This one really bugs me, too. Gender representation on boards of directors. SB-826 mandates that any publicly-held corporation whose principal executive offices, according to the corporation’s SEC 10-K form, are in California, must place at least one female director on its board by December 31, 2019.
So not the most qualified person, but just a female. It’s unbelievable. SB-826 imposes minimum seat requirements that must be filled by women proportional to the number of seats by December 31, 2021.
Again, not the most qualified people, whether they’re male or female, but yeah, you get what I’m saying. I’ll get into this one at length in one of my other videos.
All right, so now laws regarding salary history. AB-2282 basically just clarifies some of AB-168, and AB-168 bars employers from requesting, orally or in writing, the pay history of job applicants and requiring employers to provide the pay scale for a position to applicants upon request.
That’s a pretty big one, so I’ll get into that one.
Let’s see. SB-1412, about criminal background checks, which already exists, but this particular code provides that employers are not prohibited from seeking, receiving, or considering an applicant’s criminal conviction history, including those convictions that have been traditionally sealed or expunged if the employer is required by state or federal or local law to conduct criminal background checks for employment purposes.
Yay. Finally, a win for the employer, even though it’s a small one.
All right, let’s see. SB-1123, expansion of paid family leave. SB-1123 expands the scope of the family temporary disability insurance program, beginning January 1, 2021.
Okay, so this takes effect 2021, to include time off to attend to a qualifying exigency related to an individual’s spouse, registered domestic partner, child, or parent who is an active duty member of the United States Armed Forces.
Okay, let’s see. AB-1976, it’s related to lactation accommodation, requires employers to provide a room or location other than a bathroom in close proximity to the employee’s work area to express breast milk.
I don’t see this one as being a very big problem, but I’ll research it and maybe do a video about it.
Let’s see. Minimum wage increase. Okay, so on January 1, 2019, I’m sorry, on January 1, 2020, California state minimum wage increase will increase to $11. Actually, that doesn’t sound right. Let me skip that one. That just doesn’t sound right at all to me.
Let’s see. Let’s see, construction industry, PAGA prohibition, AB-1654 prohibits construction industry employees covered by collective bargaining agreements from pursuing a Private Attorney General Act, PAGA, claim.
Okay, that’s good for employers. We’ll have to get into that one.
Let’s see, copies of payroll records. This is one that’s a little bothersome for me because SB-1252 clarifies that employers must make and provide such copies. It may not require employees to find ways to make their own copies of employment records that they demand.
Well, not that big of a deal on this one, but it bothers me because typically this is something that I would use to get rid of those shakedown attorneys who aren’t really interested in putting up a fight.
Anyway, so that is the laws that are coming into effect.
