California Workplace & Employment Law Blog

The City of Los Angeles’s paid sick leave ordinance went into effect for employers with 26 or more employees last July. The City’s sick leave law takes effect for employers with 25 or fewer employees on July 1, 2017. Under the City’s ordinance, employees are entitled to take up to 48 hours of sick leave annually, which is double the amount provided for by California’s paid sick leave law.

Whenever a client asks me to prepare a severance agreement for a departing employee, the first thing I ask is if the employee is 40 or older.  This is important because severance agreements for employees who are 40 or older must comply with the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWBPA), which specifies the minimum requirements for a release of claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA).

The threat of losing valuable company trade secrets to a departing employee is real and not a matter of if, but when, it will happen.  Failure to take appropriate measures to thwart against trade secret theft could result in significant loss of profitability and erosion of an established employee and customer base, and it can happen quickly and easily.  It only takes a minute to copy or remove countless files containing confidential and proprietary company information to a thumb drive, or to email or upload files to the cloud.