Cal-Peculiarities: How California Employment Law is Different - 2023 Edition

©2023 Seyfarth Shaw LLP www.seyfarth.com 2023 Cal-Peculiarities | 7  protects from harassment not only employees and applicants but also various classes of individuals— such as independent contractors, unpaid interns, and volunteers—who usually do not qualify for the protections afforded employees,  makes employers vicariously liable for supervisor-perpetrated harassment, using a broad definition of “supervisor,”  specifies that sexual harassment may be actionable even if not motivated by sexual desire,  denies employers the Ellerth/Faragher defense, which absolves employers of liability if they took reasonable measures to prevent and correct harassment and if the plaintiff unreasonably failed to use those measures,  makes both supervisors and co-workers personally liable for perpetrating discriminatory workplace harassment,  requires all employers to distribute to all employees a detailed fact sheet on sexual harassment, and requires employer harassment policies to have specified content,  requires larger employers to train supervisors (and all rank-and-file employees) to prevent sexual harassment,  requires special sexual harassment training for janitorial employees,  requires training for supervisors to address “abusive conduct” (bullying), without regard to discriminatory conduct, and  forbids contractual provisions that would limit disclosure of sexual harassment allegations (see § 6.5). National Origin Discrimination California, going beyond federal law on national origin discrimination (as stated in Title VII),  generally forbids English-only rules in the workplace (see § 6.6), and  defines “national origin discrimination” to include discrimination against a person for holding a special driver’s license that California makes available to undocumented residents (see §§ 6.2, 6.6). Pay Equity California, going beyond federal law on pay discrimination (as stated in Title VII and the Equal Pay Act),  entitles employees to challenge pay disparities on the basis of race and ethnicity as well as sex,  allows equal-pay claims even where the compared employees do not work in the same establishment,  permits equal-pay claims where the compared jobs are merely “substantially similar,”

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTkwMTQ4