Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

With the new year comes newly-enacted laws in California. Governor Gavin Newsom signed several new laws during the last legislative session, which went into effect January 1, 2020. Is your company ready for these changes?

On April 10, 2019, the California Court of Appeals, Second District, in Diaz v. Sohnen Enterprises, 2019 S.O.S. 1722, ruled that an employee impliedly consents to an arbitration agreement by simply continuing to work, despite never signing the arbitration agreement and even outright rejecting it.

Prior to distributing arbitration agreements to its employees, Sohnen notified them that it was adopting a new dispute resolution policy requiring arbitration of all claims and specified that continued employment would constitute an implied consent of the agreement’s terms.  One of Sohnen’s employees, Erika Diaz, verbally rejected the arbitration agreement but nevertheless continued working at Sohnen.

Effective January 1, 2019, California’s minimum wage increased from $11.00 to $12.00 per hour. This increase applies to all employers who employ 26 or more employees (“large employers”).  For employers with 25 or fewer employees (“small employers”), the minimum wage increased from $10.50 to $11.00 per hour. (In fact, all employers ultimately will pay a statewide minimum wage of $15.00 per hour, although the timing of the increase depends on the employer’s size: for large employers, California’s minimum wage will increase by $1.00 on a yearly basis through January 1, 2022, and for small employers, California’s minimum wage will increase by $1.00 on a yearly basis through January 1, 2023. Cal. Lab. Code § 1182.12).