Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these legislators from the swift completion of their appointed lawmaking tasks.
Whoops! That’s too much like the US Postal Service’s slogan as inscribed on a New York Post Office. But perhaps there is something to it: both organizations seem to spend a lot of our money with the primary purpose of retaining their jobs, rather than improving the service level provided to ordinary citizens and the small businesses they own and manage.
Last time we recall checking, the number of new laws adopted by the California Legislature each year generally approaches and sometimes exceeds 1,000. So let’s take a look at just those related to Labor Law.
Here’s the list of areas in which there are significant new laws effective in 2013.
- Religion and Reasonable Accommodation
- Sex Discrimination and Breastfeeding
- Social Media and Personal Passwords
- Inspection of Personnel Records
- Itemized Wage Statements for Temporary Service Employers
- Penalties for Wage Statement Violations
- Commission Agreements
- Fixed Salaries and Overtime
- Wage Garnishment
- Human Trafficking Posting
- Workers’ Compensation Reform
- Accessibility Reform
- FEHC Eliminated, Duties Transferred to the DFEH
- Intellectual Disabilities
- Unemployment Insurance: Overpayment and Penalties
- Prevailing Wage
- Farm Labor Contractors
- Warehouse Workers
Many of them will have no significant effect on your business. But it’s an educated guess to say that every business with more than 4-5 employees is likely to be affected by at least some of these laws.
What continually amazes me is how legislators expect and effectively burden the average small business owner to learn all this “new stuff” each year, to avoid exposing himself to the peril of suffering penalties which can be rather draconian, even for small errors.
We have available a 3-page memo published by the California Chamber of Commerce that provides a sentence or two of description about the above topics. Copies available on request … let us know if you’d like a copy emailed to you. Please use the Contact Us inquiry form on this web site to submit your request. Those descriptions may help you learn if you need to do more digging to see which laws might affect you.
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