A recent California court decision has narrowed the scope of enforceable “covenants not to compete.” California, unlike many other states, severely limits the ability of an employer to prevent former employees from…

Beginning February 5, 2007, all employees who work within the San Francisco city limits are entitled to one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked. The sick leave may be…

In prior articles, I discussed the “professional“ and “executive“ exemptions to California’s wage and hour laws, and this article will focus on the “administrative” exemption.  In general, exempt employees are not entitled…

In a prior article, we discussed some concerns that employees may have with collecting unemployment benefits after receiving a severance offer.  In this article, we will focus on the types of claims…

Since many terminated and current employees ask about it, I thought I might dive into the treacherous waters of defamation in the workplace.  Defamatory conduct in the workplace may occur, for example,…

In the realm of workplace defamation claims, the aggrieved employee (or plaintiff) needs to show that the slanderous (spoken) or libelous (written) comments harmed the reputation of the employee.  There are five…

There are four common defenses to defamation claims: privilege, consent, truth and opinion.  This entry will discuss the most widely employed defense to workplace defamation claims – absolute and qualified privileges. Absolute…

There is no California or federal law, which requires employers to provide employees with vacation time.  Nonetheless, if the employer does provide vacation time, certain provisions of the California Labor Code must…