Cal-Peculiarities: How California Employment Law is Different 2022 Edition

©2022 Seyfarth Shaw LLP  www.seyfarth.com 2022 Cal-Peculiarities | 11  PAGA dashes the hopes of clever defendants who would blow up class actions by achieving individual settlements, in that aggrieved employees cannot release PAGA claims, which belong exclusively to the State of California as represented by the PAGA plaintiff private attorney general,  PAGA directs 75% of civil penalty proceeds to the State of California (with just 25% going to aggrieved employees), thereby creating an implicit bias for government employees such as Labor Commissioners (and judges) to find liability,  PAGA may deprive employers of jury trials as to PAGA claims,  PAGA permits plaintiffs suing for meal and break violations to collect attorney fees that are unavailable to plaintiffs suing in non-PAGA actions for those violations, and  PAGA enables plaintiffs to evade arbitration agreements in that PAGA actions can proceed even where the suing aggrieved employee has agreed, in an arbitration agreement, to waive representative claims. (See §§ 5.2, 5.15.) Vacation California, addressing a subject matter not regulated by federal law,  treats paid vacation as wages earned and vested on a daily basis,  requires that all unused vacation be paid upon termination of employment at the final rate of pay, regardless of when the vacation was earned or whether the employee was eligible to take vacation,  treats as the equivalent of vacation any time off that employees can use for any purpose, including some floating holidays and some sabbaticals, and  prohibits “use it or lose it” vacation provisions, although employers may place a “reasonable” cap on the further accrual of vacation pay for employees who fail to take enough paid vacation. (See § 7.19.) Employee Access to Information California, going beyond federal law on employee access to information,  entitles employees and former employees access to, and copies of, personnel and payroll records upon request (see § 10),  requires employees to post a wide variety of notices, listed in part at www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/WorkplacePostings.html, and  requires a notice to new hires, on a single form, regarding the name of the employer, the rates of pay, the identity of the workers’ compensation carrier, and other such basic information. (See § 9.)