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An Alameda County Superior Court judge has certified a class action lawsuit on behalf of as many as 10,000 women who claim they were passed over for promotions and paid less than male colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. An attorney representing the scientists estimated that the employer may face damages of more than $250 […]
Maria D. (as she was referred to in court documents) claimed that late one night as she drove along the Pacific Coast Highway in Southern California, she was pulled over by an on-duty Westec Residential Security guard wearing a uniform and gun. The guard allegedly pointed a spotlight in her face, asked for her license, […]
When the California Supreme Court approved mandatory arbitration for employment disputes last year, one question left unanswered was how existing arbitration agreements that don’t meet all the standards the court set forth would be handled. The contrasting approaches taken in two recent Court of Appeal decisions provide some guidance as to how the line will […]
On their last day of work, the unionized employees of bankrupt Aero Stretch Inc., a Gardena aerospace manufacturer, were told they could apply for positions the next day with the new company taking over, Advance Stretchforming International Inc. (ASI). The employees were also informed that there would be no union at ASI. Now the federal […]
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a videotape can be worth many times more when a surveillance camera catches an employee in the act of dramatizing a phony workers’ comp injury. That’s what happened in a recent case that resulted in the criminal conviction of a malingering employee who was also ordered to […]
It’s not uncommon for employers to offer older workers early retirement or severance benefits in exchange for having them waive potential age-bias claims they might have under the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). But employees sometimes have second thoughts—after they have accepted the benefits. Now the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued new […]
A Los Angeles court has ruled that U-Haul International Inc. improperly classified 480 current and former employees as managers and denied them overtime pay. The court found that U-Haul failed to show the employees spent more than 50% of their time on management duties. The company did meet the other criteria for classifying workers as […]
Workplace injuries and illnesses in California continue to decline, falling from 6.7 injuries for every 100 workers in 1998 to an all-time low of 6.3 per 100 workers in 1999, according to figures just released by the state Department of Industrial Relations. Of the nonfatal illnesses reported, 56% were disorders associated with repetitive stress. The […]
Large-scale race bias lawsuits are the latest legal problem facing a number of high-profile employers. A race discrimination case filed against Microsoft by an African-American former account executive could expand into a $5 billion class action lawsuit. Rahn Jackson claimed that the software giant repeatedly denied him promotions because of his race. Now a lawyer who […]
A Bay Area iron workers union has filed a lawsuit against Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co. Ltd., the firm that recently delivered four gigantic cranes to the Port of Oakland, charging that the company is violating state labor laws. The union contends that as many as two dozen Chinese workers were paid between $4 and […]