258 | 2023 Cal-Peculiarities ©2023 Seyfarth Shaw LLP www.seyfarth.com Thus, if a client employer’s labor contractor fails to pay all wages or fails to procure sufficient workers’ compensation coverage for the contractor’s own nonexempt employees, the client employer can also be liable for these failures. The statute defines “wages” expansively, by reference to Labor Code section 200, to include incentive compensation, bonuses, and vacation pay. Client employers also have non-delegable responsibilities for worksite occupational health and safety. Of course, client employers can seek contractual indemnity against labor contractors that create liability for the client employer. Payroll companies. The Court of Appeal stemmed the tide toward expanding notions of joint employment in Goonewardene v. ADP, LLC,472 where a plaintiff suing for unpaid wages, wrongful termination, and inadequate wage statements sued her employer’s payroll company on a theory that the payroll company was her joint employer. The Court of Appeal, citing prior authority,473 rejected the plaintiff’s contention that the payroll company was her joint employer, because the payroll company did not control her wages or her working conditions.474 The Supreme Court took review of the decision but not on the issue of joint employment. The Supreme Court instead granted review of the Court of Appeal’s decision to let the lawsuit proceed against the payroll company on various theories of liability (contract, negligent representation, and professional negligence), and in a 2019 decision determined that none of these theories was viable.475 (See § 16.3.7). The Court of Appeal addressed a production company’s joint employer status in a 2020 case, reversing a summary judgment in favor of a firm that agreed to stand in the place of a television production company (because the firm was a signatory to the relevant CBA while the production company was not). The firm could be liable as an employer not only because it had signed the CBA but also because the firm had the power of control over the plaintiff’s work.476 7.21.2 Other liability imposed for another employer’s Labor Code violations Customers of delinquent port drayage motor carriers. Legislation effective in 2019 requires the DLSE to post on its website a list of port drayage motor carriers that have any unsatisfied judgment or assessment or any “order, decision, or award” finding illegal conduct as to various wage/hour issues, specifically including independent contractor misclassification and derivative claims. The new law also extends joint and several liability to the customers of these drayage motor carriers for their future wage violations of the same nature.477 Direct construction contractors. Legislation enacted in 2018 clarified Labor Code section 218.7, which created joint liability for construction contractors and subcontractors. The new legislation repealed the express provision that relieved direct contractors for liability for anything other than unpaid wages and fringe or other benefit payments or contributions owed.478 Temporary employment agencies. The Court of Appeal has held that a staffing agency with its own compliant policy on meal periods need not police the meal periods of its employees who were working on a client employer’s premises, and that the staffing company, as an alleged joint employer, was not vicariously liable for the client employer’s own violations.479 Under this authority, joint employers are not vicariously liable for each other’s Labor Code violations, but rather are liable for their own conduct. A 2018 Court of Appeal decision, Castillo v. Glenair, Inc., held that workers who settled their wage and hour suit against a staffing company could not then sue the client employer on identical claims, because the client
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