Every year comes with new laws and regulations that affect employers.
It pays to stay on top of all the new requirements, so we are here to help you understand those that are most likely to affect your business. The following are the top 10 laws, regulations and trends that you need to know about going into 2019.
1 Sexual harassment training
Since 2005, California law has required employers having 50 or more employees to provide at least two hours of sexual harassment training to supervisors every two years. SB 1343 changes this by requiring employers with five or more employees to provide non-supervisory employees with at least one hour by Jan. 1, 2020.
In addition, this training must be held every two years. Employers with five or more workers must provide (or continue to provide) two hours of the biennial supervisory training, as well.
2 Data privacy
Companies that collect data on their customers online should start gearing up in 2019 for the Jan. 1, 2020 implementation of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, which is the state’s version of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation.
The law gives consumers the following rights in relation to their personal information:
- The right to know, through a general privacy policy and with more specifics available upon request, what personal information a business has collected about them, where it was sourced from, what it is being used for, whether it is being disclosed or sold, and to whom it is being disclosed or sold;
- The right to “opt out” of allowing a business to sell their personal information to third parties;
- The right to have a business delete their personal information; and
- Not be discriminated against by opting out.
The law applies to businesses that:
- Have annual gross revenues in excess of $25 million,
- Annually buy, receive for their own commercial purposes, or sell or share for commercial purposes, the personal information of 50,000 or more consumers, households or devices, and/or
- Derive 50% or more of their annual revenues from selling consumers’ personal information.
3 Independent contractors
While this legal development happened in 2018, now is a good time to go over it. In May, the California Supreme Court handed down a decision that rewrites the state’s independent contractor law.
In its decision in Dynamex Operations West, Inc. vs. Superior Court, the court rejected a test that’s been used for more than a decade in favor of a more rigid three-factor approach, often called the “ABC” test.
Employers now must be able to answer ‘yes’ to all three parts of the ABC test if they want to classify workers as independent contractors:
- The worker is free from the control and direction of the hirer in relation to the performance of the work, both under the contract and in fact;
- The worker performs work that is outside the usual course of the hirer’s business; and
- The worker is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, or business of the same nature as the work performed for the hirer.
The second prong of the ABC test is the sentence that really changes the game. Now, if you hire a worker to do anything that is central to your business’s offerings, you must classify them as an employee.
4 Electronic submission of Form 300A
In November 2018, Cal/OSHA issued an emergency regulation that requires California employers with more than 250 workers to submit Form 300A data covering calendar year 2017 by Dec. 31, 2018. The new regulation was designed to put California’s regulations in line with those of Federal OSHA.
Starting in 2019, affected employers will be required to submit their Form 300A data by March 2. For instance, the 2018 summary would have to be posted before March 2, 2019. The law applies to:
- All employers with 250 or more employees, and
- Employers with 20 to 249 employees in specified high-risk industries.
5 Harassment non-disclosure
This law, which takes effect Jan. 1, 2019, bars California employers from entering into settlement agreements that prevent the disclosure of information regarding:
- Acts of sexual assault;
- Acts of sexual harassment;
- Acts of workplace sexual harassment;
- Acts of workplace sex discrimination;
- The failure to prevent acts of workplace sexual harassment or sex discrimination; and
- Retaliation against a person for reporting sexual harassment or sex discriminat
The big issue employers will need to watch out for, according to experts, is that the new law could actually keep the employer and employee from reaching resolutions for disputes.