Two Short Articles-$15 Million Dollar Settlement & Another Way Employees Can Collect Unemployment
Unemployment Insurance Eligibility Expanded For Domestic Violence Victims
As many of you already know, an employee who resigns from employment is not entitled to receive unemployment insurance benefits, unless he or she can establish “good cause.” Now, Assembly Bill 2364 has expanded the “good cause” exception for victims of domestic violence. Prior to this Bill being passed an employee who resigned from employment to protect themselves or their children were not eligible to receive benefits. That’s been changed. According to the new law, the protection has been expanded to include other family members, such as registered domestic partners, siblings, grandparents, grandchildren, son or daughter-in-law, step children, foster children, and any guardian or person with whom the claimant has assumed reciprocal rights, duties, and liabilities of a parent child relationship or grandparent-grandchild relationship.
Here’s the kicker. Since the passage of this bill has brought California’s Unemployment Insurance Code into compliance with Federal eligibility guidelines, California is now eligible to receive $559 million dollars under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Gee, I wonder why California passed this law??
$15 Million Dollar Settlement-Wage & Hour
Dick’s Sporting Goods has agreed to settle a federal and state lawsuits claiming the company violated wage and labor laws affecting 190,000 current and former workers. The settlement resolves a class action lawsuit that was filed in 2005. The settlement involved employees in 22 states. The CEO was also named a defendant.
The original lawsuit was filed by 68 hourly employees of Dick’s. The basic claims were the same type that we have been encouraging employers to abide by, working through lunch hours, interrupted lunch breaks, and supervisors permitting employees to work overtime and giving them compensatory time off but not at the rate of time and a half.
Once again, please tighten up your wage and hour policies, practices, and procedures. Don’t assume the managers are doing it all the right way. Check and re-check to enforce these mandatory laws.
