This month, the real news is about what employment-related bills Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t sign.
The most notable bill struck down by the Governor is S.B. 242, which would have made it unlawful for employers to discriminate against an employee based on the employee’s primary language, or to ban employees from speaking any language in the workplace, unless there’s a business necessity for prohibiting employees from speaking a particular language. Note, however, that while employers can still require employees to speak a particular language in the workplace, discrimination based on ethnicity or national origin remains prohibited.
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Other employment bills vetoed by the Governor include:
- Equal Pay: (A.B. 793) This bill would have amended California antidiscrimination law to mirror the requirements of the newly enacted federal Fair Pay Act (FPA), which increases the amount of time an employee has to file a pay discrimination claim and adds penalties for equal pay violations. The Governor reasoned that a separate California law was unnecessary, since the new FPA covers California employers.
- Employment Records: (A.B. 527) This bill would have amended existing law regarding investigations into payroll practices, providing that if the labor commissioner found that an employer intentionally falsified an employee’s payroll records, the records would be presumed false for that entire pay period and disregarded.
- Employment Contracts: (A.B. 335) This bill would have invalidated any provision in an employment contract that stated that the company and a California employee agreed to apply another state’s law to any employment disputes. (Multi-state employers often have contracts that provide that the law of the company’s home state controls the employment relationship. Even though this bill was struck down, employers are still wise to ensure that California laws are followed with respect to employees working here.)
- Employee Credit Reports. (A.B. 943) Under current law, an employer can obtain an applicant’s or an employee’s credit report if the employer gets written authorization from the applicant or employee and provides the employee with a copy of the report. This bill would have made it unlawful for an employer to refuse to hire, to fire, or to in any way discriminate against an employee who refused to provide written authorization to obtain the employee’s credit report, unless the employee’s credit history was essential to the employee’s job duties