Stay Ahead of the Curve

Healthcare employers in California have spent the past six months making plans to comply with the state’s new minimum wage requirements for healthcare workers. SB 525 which requires hospitals, clinics and many other healthcare facilities to increase employee minimum hourly wages to $21 – $23, depending on the size and type of facility, is scheduled to go into effect on June 1. However, if the law’s author, state senator Maria Elana Durazo, is successful, healthcare employers could get a brief reprieve until July 1.

It has arrived! The California Division of Occupational Safety & Health has published and released a Model Workplace Violence Prevention Plan and information for employers and employees regarding the new workplace safety and violence prevention rules mandated by the recently enacted SB 553. The new law requires almost all California employers to implement a Workplace Violence Prevention Plan by July 1, 2024. Employers who have fewer than 10 employees and are not accessible to the public are exempted from the requirement.

California has frowned on employee noncompetition agreements for a long time, but some employers still use them or try to disguise them as non-solicitation agreements. If that is the case in your Company, you will need to provide your affected employees with a personalized notice explaining that the non-competition agreement or the offending clause in the employment agreement is void by Valentine’s Day—February 14, 2024.

In a recent update on January 9, 2024, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) has introduced changes to COVID-19 regulations, some of which directly impact Cal/OSHA’s COVID-19 Prevention Non-Emergency Standards that remain in effect until February 3, 2025.

California employers will soon need to provide employees with a minimum of five days or 40 hours of paid sick leave annually, up from the current requirement of three days or 24 hours..

A Plethora of New COVID Rule Abounds Public Health and Workplace Safety Officials at every level of government have been very busy crafting and issuing new rules and guidance for individuals and employers regarding which COVID-19 protections can be abandoned –and which should be kept–moving forward. Most of the new rules relax previous standards and regulations and some conflict with one another. This can be confusing for employers.

Rulings on arbitration agreements continue to come thick and fast. Arbitration is a dispute resolution procedure where legal disputes are resolved by private arbitrators – typically retired judges – rather than in the public court system. Employers generally consider arbitration to be a more favorable forum for deciding disputes than litigating in court, though the costs to arbitrate are expensive.