Since our original post, the State of California has released a revised version of the COVID-19 employer playbook, which is now called the “COVID-19 Employer Playbook: Supporting a Safer Environment for Workers and Customers.” According to this updated guidance:

The California Department of Public Health recently released detailed guidance for employers who are trying to understand their obligations during the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 Employer Playbook for a Safe Reopening is intended to help businesses plan and prepare to reopen safely and mitigate the risks for workers and customers.

As we previously shared, California employers with 5 or more employees are required to provide harassment prevention training to all employees no later than January 1, 2021. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) recently released its long-awaited, free online training for non-supervisory employees. This interactive training is one-hour in duration, optimized for mobile phones, accessible to people with disabilities, and available in Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Korean. The DFEH plans to release a two-hour supervisory training module in the coming months.

Since the World Health Organization declared the Coronavirus outbreak an international public health emergency in January, there have been more than 105,000 confirmed cases in more than 100 countries, with the majority in China, which has reported nearly 81,000 confirmed cases. In the U.S., as of March 9, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed more than 150 cases and eleven deaths across more than a dozen states.  

As we shared back in April, a 2018 law requires all employers with five or more employees in California to provide effective, interactive harassment prevention training to all employees in the state: two (2) hours for supervisory employees and one (1) hour for non-supervisory employees. The deadline for complying with this law was originally January 1, 2020. However, California Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed legislation (SB 778) extending the deadline by one year, giving employers until January 1, 2021 to complete this training.

As we head into Q2, now is a good time to remind California employers of their obligation to provide harassment prevention training to employees during 2019.

Massachusetts has a new law that prohibits employers from requiring that certain types of employees sign non-competition or “forfeiture for competition” agreements (collectively “non-competition agreements”) and establishes minimum requirements that non-competition agreements must meet to be enforceable. The new law will take effect on October 1, 2018 and apply to agreements executed after that date. 

The Massachusetts Act to Establish Pay Equity (“MEPA”) takes effect on July 1, 2018. The goal of the new law is to reduce pay differentials among men and women doing comparable work. The penalties for violating the new law include back wages, benefits and other compensation, and attorney’s fees. For an overview of MEPA, please see Part I of this two-part series on MEPA.