©2023 Seyfarth Shaw LLP www.seyfarth.com 2023 Cal-Peculiarities | i About Our Graphics Yes, we know that California is a contiguous part of the North American continent. But seventeenth-century mapmakers saw it otherwise. When they outlined the western contours of our region, they extended the Gulf of California far north, to make California appear as a yam-shaped island in the Pacific Ocean. If such maps are now historical curiosities, they still reflect a persistent view that California is a world apart. Carey McWilliams explored this theme in his 1946 classic, SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA:AN ISLAND ON THE LAND. He argued that Southern California is, metaphorically, an island in profound cultural ways. Much the same is true of California writ large when it comes to labor and employment law. So while early maps were cartographically incorrect, their symbolism remains powerful. Any picture of California as an island apart remains vivid in 2023. Although the national government now is more in step with California’s own attitude toward the business community, our federal legislators, regulators, and judges still have a long way to go before they can even begin to match California’s extraordinary solicitude toward the interests of labor unions, law enforcement agencies, and the plaintiffs’ bar. During the forseeable future, California not only will continue its traditional role of providing progressive examples for similarly inclined states to follow, but will provide examples for the federal government to follow as well. Perhaps nowhere has the peculiarity of California law been more prominent than it is in the area of labor and employment law. Federal labor law hit high tide in the 1930s, leaving us with the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The federal high tide returned in the 1960s—leaving us with the Equal Pay Act, Title VII, and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act—and returned yet again in the 1990s, leaving us with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act. In the Golden State, meanwhile, the waves of labor and employment regulation have, especially during this century, risen ever higher, even while federal efforts occasionally ebbed. And California’s ever-rising tide has left us with the extraordinary law described in this book. This book highlights differences between federal and California law in key areas of interest to private employers that operate both in California and in the rest of America. In virtually every case, the California version favors workers, labor unions, government agencies, plaintiffs, and the lawyers who represent them—always at the expense of the business community.
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