Quirky Question #265, Can I have an English-Only Policy?
Question: Our Company may implement a policy that requires employees to speak in the English language. What risks should we be aware of?
Category: California Questions
Quirky Question #263, My Supervisor is Stressing Me Out!
Question: We have an employee who claims she has a mental disability involving stress and anxiety caused by working with her supervisor, and she has asked for a different supervisor as an accommodation. This doesn’t seem to be a legitimate disability – are we missing something?
Quirky Question #260, Data breach incident response plans
Question: For data breach preparation, what guidance have federal and state regulators issued regarding incident response plans?
Quirky Question #246, iKnow where your iPad is
Question: Our California company intends to provide iPads to all of our sales employees, but to make sure we can locate the iPads if they are lost or stolen, we plan to use the iPads’ GPS capabilities to track their locations. As an added bonus, we’ll also be able to track the sales employees themselves. Any concerns with this plan?
Quirky Question #243 – More on Breach Notification Laws
Question: Can you tell me what has been happening in California regarding breach notification laws?
Quirky Question #242 – Policing Break and Time Records Pays Off
Question: We are a California employer. After all the publicity surrounding class actions over meal and break periods, we instituted automatic warnings if employees take too long or too short a meal or rest break. Is anyone really enforcing this kind of discipline or are we wasting our time?
Quirky Question # 239, Employers Might Be Liable For Accidents During The Commute If They Require Employees To Use Their Vehicle During The Work Day
Question: Our office manager occasionally runs errands during the day such as delivering something to a customer or picking up lunch for a meeting. We reimburse her at the IRS rate for mileage. Yesterday, on her way home, she rear-ended the car in front of her causing substantial damage. She has asked for the company’s insurance information. We told her...
Quirky Question #228, E-Cigarettes: To Vape or Not to Vape at the Workplace
Question: Our California company has a no smoking policy but had not thought to include a ban on e-cigarettes, as we had not experienced any problems with them at the workplace until now. A handful of our employees use e-cigarettes during work hours. A week ago, a supervisor informed HR that coworkers were concerned about the health effects of being...
Quirky Question # 225, California Law Is Not Going to Pieces
Question: We are located in California and would like to change to a piece-rate system where we pay non-exempt employees a set amount for completed tasks. I understand that this is referred to as paying for a “piece-rate” and it is legal as long as the employee is compensated at least at the minimum wage for all hours worked. Is...
Quirky Question # 224, The De Minimis Defense to Off the Clock Work Claims
Question: We have an employee who is claiming that he should be paid for time cleaning up his work station after logging out of our electronic time keeping system each night. Literally, he spends one or two minutes straightening his piles of paper and on other trivial similar tasks. Another company HR representative said that every minute an employee spends...
