After months of anticipation, the California Supreme Court answered “yes” to the critical question of whether “aggrieved” PAGA plaintiffs retain their standing to pursue representative claims in court after their individual claims have been compelled to arbitration.
Erik Adolph worked as a driver for Uber, delivering food to customers through Uber’s online platform. As
California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) is already one of the most employee-friendly state civil rights laws in the country. Until now, it was not clear whether employees could sue not only their direct employers for discrimination and harassment, but also other independent businesses that work on behalf on their employers.
In Raines v. U.S. Healthworks Medical Group, the California Supreme Court ruled
As the federal government wades deeper into the realm of mobile "apps" (among the most useful, of course, the Smithsonian Institution’s “MEanderthal” app, which enables users to morph personal photos into prehistoric images of themselves), various U.S. agencies are promoting new apps that allow the public to access official information from “the palm of [one’s] hand.”
Not to be left behind, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) recently rolled out a smartphone app to help employees independently track the hours they work. The “DOL-Timesheet,” as the app has been dubbed, is currently available in English and Spanish for use on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. The app is designed to assist employees in recording their hours worked and calculating the wages – including overtime – that they’re owed. (Overtime pay is computed at a rate of one and one-half times the employee’s regular rate for all hours worked each week in excess of 40 – though California also has a daily overtime requirement for hours worked in excess of eight.) Users are currently able to view and email summaries of their logged hours and gross pay, and additional features have been promised, including the ability to track tips, commissions, bonuses, deductions, holiday and weekend pay, shift differentials, and paid time off.
Intel Corp. v. Hamidi, 30 Cal. 4th 1342 (2003)
Kourosh Kenneth Hamidi, a former Intel engineer, formed an organization named Former and Current Employees of Intel (FACE-Intel) to disseminate information and views critical of Intel’s employment and personnel policies and practices. Over a 21-month period, Hamidi sent as many as 35,000 messages to e-mail addresses at Intel. The trial court granted Intel’s application for