California Workplace & Employment Law Blog

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.

The three key documents that every employer should provide to their employees consists of an employee handbook, a confidentiality agreement, and an arbitration agreement.  In advising small and mid-size businesses, I have found that the majority of these employers not only do not have their employees sign an arbitration agreement, but they are usually not aware of what arbitration even is.  As I’ll explain below, an effective arbitration agreement is the key to keeping employment-based claims out of court, significantly minimizing your attorneys’ fees should an employee file suit, and preventing runaway jury awards.

On March 14, 2017, the City of Los Angeles updated its Rules and Regulations and issued a new Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) regarding the City’s Minimum Wage Ordinance (MWO) that went into effect last year, and which annually provides 48 hours of paid sick leave to employees who work within the geographic boundaries of the City of Los Angeles. Under the MWO, paid sick leave went into effect on July 1, 2016 for employers with 26 or more employees, and will go into effect on July 1, 2017 for employers with 25 or fewer employees. As with California’s paid sick leave law (the Healthy Workplaces, Healthy Families Act), paid sick leave under the MWO may be used for the purposes of preventive care or for the diagnosis, care, or treatment of an existing health condition of an employee or employee’s family member, or for specified purposes for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.

The following is a summary of the MWO’s main features regulating paid sick leave in the City of Los Angeles as set forth in the City’s updated Rules and Regulations and FAQ. …