Current topics in HR - Research Paper Example

Current Topics in HR INTRODUCTION The topic has gained major attention currently pertaining to clarification of rulesand procedures regarding wage and hour decisions made by the Supreme Court of California. This topic in human resource discusses five recent wage and hour decision judgments made by the ‘Supreme Court of California’. These are some of the recent cases that were drawn either in favor of petitioner or the defendant, primarily by the Trial Court and then finally the ruling was confirmed by the Court of Appeal. In May 2014, the Supreme Court’s much required supervision, which was concerned with the installation of an appropriate course of action for trying and certifying hour and wage class judgments, made the process of class certification more accurate. The court recommended that a feasible trial plan should be set up, which should give equal contemplation to both the existing class issues along with those issues that would be practiced with managerial efficiency while respecting the rights of the employers (Crain and Kim 7-8). The plan would also sanction presenting evidences by the employer, which were pertinent to the subjects of both damages and liabilities. It must also permit the employers to formulate the use of confirmatory defenses towards the class as a whole or mainly some members belonging to the class (Jones Day Publications, “California Supreme Court Ruling to Make Class Certification Process More Rigorous”). CASE BRIEFS AND ANALYSIS Case 1: Jong v. Kaiser Found. Health Plan, Inc., 226 Cal. App. 4th 391 (2014) This case came under the Supreme Court’s judgment, fought by Henry Jong, an outpatient pharmacy manager for Kaiser against the company. The manager claimed that he had owed unpaid overtime that had been earned from the suspected “off-the-clock” hours, which either the company knew or was supposed to know that Jong had worked. In his statement, the manager testified that he was aware of the policy that mentioned compensation of payment for all worked hours of Kaiser and also that he was recognizable with Kaiser’s rules of timekeeping and time recording system. Jong however agreed that he had signed a deed named “Attestation Form for Hourly Managers and Supervisors – Working Off-the-Clock not allowed”. The manager disclosed the fact that he did not knew if anybody in the Kaiser’s organization was aware that he was working off-the-clock. Finally, Jong submitted that he had rang an alarm code data from his pharmacy that was cross referenced from his time records, which indicated that he had disarmed the alarm before the actual time, which he reported to begin his work. The subordinate trial Court had granted outline judgement in support of Kaiser and the Court of Appeal confirmed that none of the evidences having considered being independent or collective, is adequate to hold up a ruling that Kaiser was conscious about Jong’s unreported overtime hours. It was also identified that the trial court’s reason to refuse the adequacy of this proof is influential. Yet assuming that the ease of use of such data could have met the ‘should have known’ obligation against ‘could have known’, the information relating to alarming, which lacked clarification to what the appellant was doing prior to disarming the alarm and clocking in and vice-versa. Ultimately, Jong failed to create an issue of material facts that were an essential part of his claim. Hence, Kaiser’s concept for outline ruling was settled properly (Oncidi, “Summary Judgment Was Properly Granted In favor of Employer in Off-The-Clock Overtime Case”). Case 2: Castaneda v. The Ensign Group, Inc., 229 Cal. App. 4th 1015 (2014) In Castaneda v. The Ensign Group, Inc., John Castaneda, a nursing assistant, filed a class action against The Ensign Group, Inc, on behalf of a reputed class of nursing assistants for “Unpaid Minimum and Overtime Wages”. The nursing assistants argued that Ensign was the alternative self of Cabrillo Rehabilitation Center, which was a nursing facility owned by Ensign, where he and the other nursing assistants worked. The trial court granted Ensign’s motion for summary judgement, holding that Castaneda was not an employee of Ensign as a matter of law that Castaneda has appealed to the court. On appeal, the Court of Appeal reverted back and put forward its opinion by making a note that Ensign admitted about owing Cabrillo. It purchased Cabrillo in 2009 and owned all Cabrillo’s stocks. The court noted that in the case of Castaneda, Ensign did not only have a contractual relationship with Cabrillo, but actually it owned Cabrillo. The Court also noted that Castaneda had cited proofs showing that Ensign had controlled and supervised job functions of their employees, including confirmation that Cabrillo used Ensign forms, policy, time-clock and training videos. Thus, on Castaneda’s affirmation that he was hired both by Ensign and Cabrillo, the Court of Appeal considered the paper contract between Ensign and Cabrillo as true, which in turn proved that employees working in Cabrillo were of its own and not of Ensign. Along with the confirmation of control, the Court of Appeal also cited evidences that appeared to be less evident to control and more related to if Cabrillo was an ‘alter ego’ of Ensign. For example, before addressing the matter of Ensign’s direction over the petitioner, the Court of Appeal had cited evidence of the company’s management control and framework over Cabrillo. The court also noted that Ensign owns other portfolio or cluster companies that are involved in Cabrillo’s operations. It cited evidences, which showed seamless flows of corporate officers between Ensign and its clusters. Later, the Court of Appeal forwarded additional evidences through which, a combination of facts inferring that petitioner and others were staff of Ensign who were working under Cabrillo, had existence of Ensign’s name in their own e-mail addresses. In addition, the occurrence of Ensign’s signage in the facilities of Cabrillo proved to be important evidence. Finally, the Court of Appeal granted its decision, holding that there were adequate indication, which proved Ensign to be exercising control over Cabrillo’s operations and workforce. In its Sec 10-k form, Ensign also had declared a number of statements that it acted as a beneficiary and provided human resource, centralized information expertise and bookkeeping services to its group of companies that involved Cabrillo (Oncidi, “Parent Corporation May Have Liability for Nonpayment of Wages”). Case 3: Rhea v. General Atomics, 227 Cal. App. 4th 1560 (2014) The case of Rhea v. General Atomics is a very important case, which favored the employer from the allegation to have violated laws of exempting employees to use paid leave time for being absence from work on partial working days. The case addressed the plea raised by Lori Rhea, who was employed in a salaried position at General Atomics. Lori was exempted from the organization owing to several factors such as a proposed class of General Atomics exempted employees working in California subjected to annual leave for partial day absences of less than four hours. Lori was an exempted employee as well, under the provision of overtime payment as per California and Central wages and hour laws. Such excused employees working in General Atomics received a salary and accumulated complete annual wage leaves, which could be exploited to obtain paid time off for reasons such as vacations, family obligations or sickness. The company required its employees to make use of such leave hours when they were absent on a partial or full day basis, without considering the length of the absence of partial day. It was in this context that Rhea’s complaint alleged different hour and wage violations under the California law. In subsequence, the involved parties filed cross motion for summary judgement on the matters of authority of the company’s practice that required the exempted employees to make use of annual leave in-stead of partial day absences. Correspondingly, the trial court had granted General Atomics summary judgment in motion on the basis that regardless of its length, California laws do not permit obligations of exempting employees to use of their annual leaves in place of their partial leaves. The appealing court did not agree that requiring of employees to make use of their annual leaves for partial days of absence had an outcome in the sacrifice of vested annual leave because General Atomics did not take away any of the vested annual holidays. Rather, General Atomics set out guidelines for exercising the annual leaves, which had been permitted. Furthermore, the court found no basis in the California law to differentiate between fractional day absence having varied durations and timings. Therefore, the Court of Appeal declared the judgment in support of General Atomics (Oncidi, “Employer Properly Deducted Hours from Exempt Employee’s Leave Bank”). Case 4: Godfrey v. Oakland Port Servs. Corp., 2014 WL 5439289 (Cal. Ct. App. 2014) Petitioners, Gary Gilbert and Lavon Godfrey filed a case against AB Trucking, claiming that AB was not making payments to its drivers for the hours they had worked for, and misclassified some of the drivers as non-employee trainees to which, it did not pay any salary and failed to provide resting hours and compulsory meals on time. A trial bench was set up, which also found that all the reasons for action were in favor of the petitioners excluding for one reason that AB Trucking did not breach the living wage ordinance of Oakland, fundamentally for the reason that AB has not provided employment to enough number of people who are to be enclosed under the wage ordinance. The Court was able to make realistic findings, which included evidences that AB had consistently prohibited the members to take resting hours and meal breaks. AB argued with the fact that Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) prevented to install California laws that had governed the resting hours and meal breaks when applied to motorist carriers. The defendant also put forward the fact that the resting hours and meals break laws have a major impact on services, routes and prices, as these laws were deemed to have an adverse effect on the quality of service delivery and lessen the amount of deliveries. The Court of Trial had previously qualified the class, proceeding towards a trial bench where the petitioners had prevailed and were provided an amount of $964,557 along with class depiction enhancements, costs and attorney fees. The appealed court confirmed the holding that the “Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act of 1994” does not obstruct the requirements of resting hours and meal breaks in California. The Court of Appeal had additionally held that class had been appropriately qualified and that significant amount of proof had supported the damages. Therefore, dependent, finally disputed that the court of trial had erred because it had awarded utmost level of damages to all the classes involved and every member of each class without ruling out the fact that all the class associates had been prohibited from meal breaks and resting hours. The appealing court disqualified this argument of AB by noting what the trial court was able to find in respect to the class formed as a whole by its members. It judged that AB did not have had any policy framed that related to class members taking meals or having rest breaks. The court added that drivers were able to take such breaks typically on-duty time and the company had always dejected and avoided the members from taking off-duty breaks. Hence, The Court of Appeal confirmed the award of damages to the members as per the previous decisions taken by the trial court (Oncidi, “Federal Law Does Not Preempt Meal and Rest Break Requirements for Motor Carrier Employees”). Case 5: Peabody v. Time Warner Cable, Inc., 59 Cal. 4th 662 (2014) As of the recent examples, the Peabody v. Time Warner Cable Inc. case, which was petitioned on the basis of the fact that employees will be entitled for California’s commissioned employee exemption only if they receive wages that will exceed one and one-half times the minimum wage in the two weeks wage payment period. The court held that a manager may not guarantee the least earnings point of the exclusion by relocating wages from an unrelated pay period for employees who are being paid commissions calculated on a monthly basis. In addition, the court particularly declined to deal with the issue but its reasoning will direct petitioner’s counsel to argue that more than half of an employee’s pay in a period should symbolize commissions if the employee has to meet the exceptions in that pay period. Earlier, Time Warner Cable Inc. had classified a former account executive, Susan Peabody as exempt under the commissioned employee exclusion. After Peabody had left the organization, she put forward a class act lawsuit that alleged misclassification, hour & wage violations and unpaid overtime against the company. Under the compensation plan of Time Warner, the working employees would be paid commission only if the three events occur. These events were relating to fulfilling the requirements of an order, broadcast the advertisement and collection of revenue from the client. Hence, commissions were not paid during every bi-weekly pay period because of the calculation of revenues earned from clients and then distributing it as commissions from the earned revenues by Time Warner. The company had also argued that the employees were contained by California’s commissioned employee exemption and as a result, she was not entitled to receive compensations for overtime. The Supreme Court also discarded the arguments of Time Warner that it should consider the wage received and the number of hours that the employee has worked over the monthly commissioned period for applying the exemption. The court also ordered that the company cannot gratify the commissioned employee exemption in such periods of pay, where the employees do not truly obtain more than 1.5 times the minimum wage. Hence, the justice cooperatively agreed that it would be conflicting with Sec 204 of the Labor code which relates to timing of salary payments and Sec 226 concerning to itemized wage procedures, only if the employer can mark commissions over a month’s phase to meet up the employee exclusion clause (Oncidi, “Commission Wages Paid In One Pay Period May Not Be Attributed To Other Pay Periods In Order To Satisfy Minimum Wage Requirements”). CONCLUSION The first case of ‘Jong v. Kaiser Found. Health Plan, Inc’ discussed the fact based on which, the summary judgment was properly approved in favor of employer in case of Off-the-clock overtime. It was further argued in the case of ‘Castaneda v. The Ensign Group, Inc. about arguments and judgments of the court concerning the dealings with non-payment of wages when the parent company had to suffer liability charges. Accordingly, the case of ‘Rhea v. General Atomic’ showcased the decision of the court regarding deduction of rest and lunch hours from the exempted employees leave bank. Under the same wage and hour category, the next case of Godfrey v. Oakland Port Servs. Corp. dealt with the court’s proceedings that federal law does not preempt meal and rest break requirements for motor carrier employees. Finally, the ‘Peabody v. Time Warner Cable, Inc.’ case confers to the appealing court’s ruling towards commission pay phases that may not be related with other pay periods in order to assure minimum requirement of wages. Keeping all these circumstances into consideration, it is advised to the California employers to focus on incorporation of class action arbitration waivers in their respective arbitration courses. Employers who are having or are implementing existing class actions must also cautiously review such agreements so as to decide whether the necessities of the petitioners have been met and whether the open ended questions raised by the court have been satisfied. Furthermore, there should be continuity in auditing the hour as well as wage practices thoroughly by the employer for adhering to the California laws and thereby, avoiding similar lawsuits. Works Cited Crain, Marion and Pauline T. Kim, “A Holistic Approach to Teaching Work Law.” Saint Louis University School of Law 58 (2013): 7-29. Print. “California Supreme Court Ruling to Make Class Certification Process More Rigorous.” Jones Day Publications. 2014. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. Oncidi, Tony. Summary Judgment Was Properly Granted In Favor Of Employer In Off-The-Clock Overtime Case. Proskauer Rose LLP, 2014. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. Oncidi, Tony. Parent Corporation May Have Liability For Nonpayment Of Wages. Proskauer Rose LLP, 2014. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. Oncidi, Tony. Employer Properly Deducted Hours From Exempt Employee’s Leave Bank. Proskauer Rose LLP, 2014. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. Oncidi, Tony. Federal Law Does Not Preempt Meal And Rest Break Requirements For Motor Carrier Employees. Proskauer Rose LLP, 2014. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. Oncidi, Tony. Commission Wages Paid In One Pay Period May Not Be Attributed To Other Pay Periods In Order To Satisfy Minimum Wage Requirements. Proskauer Rose LLP, 2014. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. Read More