Harassment & Discrimination

I was recently retained by a new client to defend the company against wage and hour charges brought by a former employee that were filed with the California Labor Commissioner’s office. As I do whenever I get a new client, I asked if they had an employee handbook or other written personnel policies. Unfortunately, they did not. This makes it much more difficult to defend against employment claims brought by employees. The failure to have written policies may be taken as evidence that you do not comply with your legal obligations.

One of the main areas where I see employers botch their legal duties to their employees (and thereby potentially invite lawsuits) arises with employees who request disability leaves. There are different laws that provide for disability-related leave, such as the federal Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and the analogous California Family Rights Act (CFRA) (both of which apply only to employers with 50 or more employees), as well as California’s Pregnancy Disability Leave law. But the most common type of leave requested is disability leave under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA).

I’ve previously written about the importance of distributing employee handbooks, employment arbitration agreements and confidentiality agreements to your workforce. However, if you have employees who have little English literacy, it is important that you also provide translations of these key documents to your non-English speaking employees.