Category: Client Alerts

With 2023 just around the corner, here are the top 3 things employers need to do to get ready for 2023:

1. Update your employee handbook. Let us help you to tune-up your employee handbook for 2023.

Having an up-to-date handbook will ensure that your organization’s managers will be able to comply with California’s ever changing employment laws.

New changes for 2023 include:

• New requirements for unpaid bereavement leave;
• Expansion of the California Family Rights Act; and
• Arbitration agreement updates.

If it has been several years since you’ve updated your handbook, then your handbook may be out of date regarding earlier changes related to:

• Paid Sick Leave;
• Paid Family Leave;
• Organ and Bone Marrow Donation Leave;
• Lactation Accommodations; and more.

Also we recommend checking that your handbook is up-to-date on California’s rules regarding meal periods, rest breaks, and overtime. We see an increasing number of wage and hour class action and Private Attorneys General Act claims. When employers’ wage and hour policies are non-compliant or not followed, they face greater risks.

2. Get ready for new pay transparency requirements.

Employers need to get ready now to comply with SB 1162. Key requirements begin January 1, 2023.

Job postings must include the pay scale (Employers of 15 or employees)

All job postings via direct or third parties, must include a pay scale. The “pay scale” should identify the salary or hourly range that the employer reasonably expects to pay for the position.

Pay scale must be provided to applicants and employees upon request (All employers)

Pay scales must be provided to applicants or employees upon request.

Recordkeeping: Employers must maintain records of job titles and wage history for each employee (All employers)

Employers must include employee job title and wage rate history in their employee records for the duration of employment plus three years after employment ends. This information must be recorded and accessible for review.

Annual pay data report (Private employers with 100 or more employees)

By May 10, 2023, these large private employers must submit an annual pay data report with new information on median and mean hourly rates by race, ethnicity, and sex within each job category. Similar reporting is required of private employers with 100 or more employees hired through labor contractors.

3. Employers Must Comply with Additional Requirements of the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (“CCPA”) (as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020 (“CPRA”).

In January 2023, certain private business employers in California will have expanded privacy and information security obligations. The time is now to plan for significant changes to existing policies and practices for handling certain information.

Which Businesses Must Comply with the CCPA?

The CCPA applies to most companies that do business in California and:

• Have an annual gross revenue in excess of $25 million dollars in the preceding calendar year;
• Alone or in combination, annually buy, sell, or share the personal information of 100,000 or more consumers or households; or
• Derive 50 percent or more of their annual revenues from selling or sharing consumers personal information.

The CCPA does not apply to nonprofit organizations or government agencies.

What is required?

Beginning January 1, 2023, employers will be required to:

• Provide an expanded notice to California-based applicants and employees at the time of collection of information concerning information such as the categories of personal information and sensitive personal information collected, the purposes that they will be used, how long the information will be retained, and whether the information is sold or shared.
• Provide new privacy disclosures about employees’ CCPA rights and how to exercise these privacy rights. The employers privacy policy must be updated every 12 months.
• Develop procedures to comply with requests for information, deletion, and correction.
• Enter into data processing agreements with any third parties or services providers, such as including vendors, with whom the employer shares personal information.
• Provide training to ensure proper responses to CCPA requests.

Businesses who fail to comply with the CCPA by January 1, 2023 will be subject to an injunction and per violation penalties of $2,500 and up to $7,500 for each intentional violation and each violation  involving personal information of minors. At present, enforcement is  through a new California Privacy Protection Agency, and not individual consumers/employees. Employees/consumers do have a private right of action for negligent data breaches.

To prepare for these new data privacy rules, employers are recommended to:

• Determine what type of employee and applicant personal information the company is collecting, where it is stored, and how it disclosed or shared with vendors or others.
• Prepare written policies and procedures to ensure disclosure at the time of collection of information, yearly privacy disclosures, a process to make requests, and timelines and responsibilities for complying with requests.
• Prepare written disclosures and data processing agreements.
• Ensure reasonable security procedures and practices for personal information.
• Provide training to staff who will be responsible for ensuring responses to CCPA requests.

As always, please reach out to your employment counsel at Meyers Nave if you have any questions, concerns, needs for clarification or if you would like further assistance.

Overview

Earlier this year, Governor Newsom signed Assembly Bill (AB) 2011 (Wicks) and Senate Bill (SB) 6 (Caballero) into law to increase housing production in the state by allowing residential construction on commercially-zoned property. The two bills balance the State’s interest in new housing with local control and provide for increased wages, benefits and standards for construction workers on the projects. The bills take effect on July 1, 2023.

Basics of AB 2011

AB 2011, the Affordable Housing and High Road Jobs Act of 2022, provides for streamlined ministerial approval for certain multifamily housing development projects in commercial zones. This statute creates two processes for streamlined, ministerial review of housing projects on commercially zoned property. Under the first process, 100% of the proposed units within the housing development project must be dedicated to lower income households at an affordable cost or at an affordable rent set in an amount consistent with the rent limits established by the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee. The second process in AB 2011 provides for certain ministerial approvals where a development abuts a commercial corridor (defined as a public street, other than a freeway, that has a right-of-way of at least 70 feet and not greater than 150 feet) and has a frontage along the commercial corridor of a minimum of 50 feet. To qualify for ministerial approval under the Commercial Corridor option, these developments must:

• if the development will be owner-occupied, have at least 30% of the units offered at an affordable housing cost to moderate income households or 15% of the units offered at an affordable housing cost to lower income households; or
• if rental units, meet the higher of (a) the minimum inclusionary housing requirement of the city or county in which the property is located or (b) either i) 15% of the units reserved for lower income households or ii) 8% of units reserved for very low income households and 5% of units for extremely low income households.

In addition, AB 2011 projects must also meet a number of threshold site-specific and project-specific criteria, as defined in the statute. This additional qualifying criteria, include, among other things, that the property is located within a zone where office, retail, or parking are principally permitted use; the property is in an urbanized area; and the property is located no closer than 500 feet from a freeway. The law establishes the minimum and maximum densities, height limits, and setback requirements for such projects, which differ depending on the size of the project site, the amount of commercial corridor frontage, and whether the site is within ½ mile of a “major transit stop.” Projects in commercial corridors are also subject to the applicable objective standards for the “closest zone” in the jurisdiction that allows multifamily residential use at the residential density permitted by AB 2011. 100% affordable projects are only subject to the applicable objective standards for the “closest parcel” meeting that density requirement.

Under AB 2011, a ministerial application for qualifying projects is exempt from the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and a decision on the project must be made within 90 days for projects with less than 150 homes or within 180 days for projects with more than 150 homes. Any design review must occur in this limited timeframe and be based solely on objective standards. If a local government determines that a project does not comply with objective planning standards, it must provide a written explanation to the proponent within a 60-90 day period from filing of the application, depending on the number of the units in the project. Projects using the streamlined approval process would also be eligible for density bonuses, incentives and concessions, waivers and reductions in development standards, and potentially reduced parking ratios under California’s Density Bonus Law (Gov. Code § 65915.).

Finally, in terms of workforce requirements, AB 2011 mandates payment of prevailing wages to all construction workers on an eligible project. Developers building 50 or more units of housing must also submit monthly compliance reports to the local government and make family healthcare benefit contributions for projects with qualified construction craft workers on projects with more than 50 units. These expenditures may be credited toward compliance with the prevailing wage requirements.

Basics of SB 6

SB 6, the Middle Class Housing Act of 2022, allows for residential development on property zoned for retail, parking and office space without the requirement for a rezoning of the property. In comparison to AB 2011, SB 6 does not offer a ministerial approval pathway unless the project otherwise qualifies under SB 35. However, SB 6 projects offer lower minimum density requirements and no affordability requirement, except that the project must satisfy any applicable inclusionary housing requirement of the city or county in which the property is located. Nonetheless, SB 6 projects must be housing development projects that are either entirely for residential units or mixed use projects with at least 50% of the square footage dedicated to residential use. These projects should be located on sites 20 acres or less in an urban area and should not be adjoined to any site where more than a third of the square footage is dedicated to industrial use. SB 6 projects must satisfy the height, setback, parking requirements of the jurisdiction’s closest parcel that allows the authorized density.

Prevailing wages for labor are required under SB 6. Unlike AB 2011, labor organizations must be notified in advance to work towards an agreement for a skilled and trained workforce. If two skilled and trained bids are not received, however, a developer can rebid without the requirement. This process would ensure union labor for SB 6 projects if two qualified bids are received from contractors.

Implementation of New Laws

Despite its many pre-approval conditions for compliance, developers may prefer AB 2011 due to its ministerial project approval in a streamlined, CEQA-exempt process, which significantly shortens the time for project approval. Moreover, AB 2011 lacks strict skilled and trained workforce requirements which may enable more flexibility for workforce selection. Although prevailing wages are required, the additional cost of requiring prevailing wages may be off-set by the time and dollar savings provided by the streamlined approval. However, because non-100% affordable housing AB 2011 projects must be located on sites in a qualifying commercial corridor, developers with projects on commercial sites located outside of a qualifying commercial corridor will need to rely on SB 6. SB 6 lacks the approval streamlining and CEQA-exemption of AB 2011 and requires both prevailing wages and a skilled and trained workforce. However, the allowed density for SB 6 projects could be at least 30 dwelling units per acre (if the project is located in a metropolitan jurisdiction), not including any potential density bonus, and SB 6 projects may qualify as development projects under the Housing Accountability Act, which significantly limits the discretion of the local agency to deny compliant projects.

Cities and counties should review their current zoning and development regulations to determine what standards would apply for projects in the jurisdiction’s major commercial areas based on the “closest zone” or “closest site”, as appropriate. Cities and counties may wish to modify objective standards in anticipation of projects utilizing SB 6 and AB 2011 to ensure that the standards in the “closest zones” are appropriate.

Conclusion

Whether looking at these housing laws from a local agency or a private development perspective, the real-world implementation of AB 2011 and SB 6 to proposed development sites and development projects is quite complicated and site-specific. To determine whether your property or project qualifies, you can use Meyers Nave’s AB 2011/SB 6 matrix, linked here, or contact the authors listed above for a more in-depth analysis.

Almost three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, federal and state regulators are taking steps to prepare for a longer term response to COVID-19. Here are five developments to keep in mind:

1. The Definitions of “Close Contact” and “Infectious Period” Have Changed.

California Department of Public Health (“CDPH”) Director Tomás J. Aragón issued a State Public Health Officer order that changed the definitions of both “close contact” and “infectious period” as of October 14, 2022. The new “close contact” definition means that everyone in a smaller space (400,000 cubic feet or less) who shares indoor airspace for a cumulative total of 15 minutes during an infectious period is considered a “close contact,” even if they were not within six feet of the infected employee. For spaces greater than 400,000 cubic feet, the old definition of being within 6 feet for a cumulative total of 15 minutes or more in a 24-hour period still applies. The new “infectious period” definition is less stringent, and may end after five days, in some circumstances. The new definitions are here.

2. Employers Must Continue to Provide COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave through December 31, 2022.

A new wave of infections may be coming in late fall, due to low booster rates and following the wave of infection in Europe. Employers should keep in mind that pursuant to AB-152, public and private employers of 26 or more employees must provide COVID-19 supplemental paid sick leave through December 31, 2022. Previously, the expiration date was September 30, 2022. The new law does not increase the number of hours of leave that are available. Details of the COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave requirements are located here.

AB-152 also established establishes the California Small Business and Nonprofit COVID-19 Relief Grant Program to provide small businesses and nonprofits with 26 to 49 employees with grants of up to $50,000 for actual costs incurred for COVID-19 Supplemental Paid Sick Leave.

3. COVID-19 General Exposure Notification Requirements Continue Through January 1, 2024.

Currently, California public and private employers must notify employees within one business day if they have been exposed to COVID-19. Under recently enacted AB-2693, the end of this requirement was extended from January 1, 2023 to January 1, 2024. In addition, the new law makes it easier to notify employees of exposure, by permitting an employer to instead post the information in a prominent place and on any existing employee portal for notices.

The notice must remain posted for at least 15 calendar days and include information including (1) the dates the employee or subcontracted employee was on the worksite; (2) the location of the exposures; (3) contact information for employees to receive information on COVID-19 related benefits to which exposed employees may be entitled; and (4) contact information to receive the cleaning and disinfection plan. The notice must be in English and the language understood by the majority of employees. Employers must retain for three years a log of the dates the notice was posted at each worksite.

4. The COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standards Will Likely Be Replaced by a “Non-Emergency” COVID-19 Prevention Regulation.

Since November 2020, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (“Cal/OSHA”) has issued a series of COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standards (“ETS”), the latest which is expected to expire on December 31, 2022.

Cal/OSHA has proposed new Non-Emergency COVID-19 Prevention Standards here. However, even if the Cal/OSHA Standards Board approves the new nonemergency standard on their next meeting, the Office of Administrative Law (OAL) will still need to review the standard and file it with the Secretary of State before it can take effect. This means the current ETS could remain in effect past the December 31st expiration date while the OAL reviews and adopts the new standard.

5. Federal and State COVID-19 State of Emergency Orders Are Ending.

With low reported COVID-19 infection rates, on October 17, 2022, Governor Newsom declared that California’s COVID-19 state of emergency will end on February 28, 2023. The federal COVID-19 emergency orders are currently set to expire January 11, 2023. These changes, and decreased federal funding, will likely mean increased costs for employees for vaccinations, testing, and treatment in 2023.

As always, please reach out to your employment counsel at Meyers Nave if you have any questions, concerns, needs for clarification or if you would like further assistance.

California public and private employers should begin preparing for significant new requirements for job postings and pay data reporting. On September 27, 2022 Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill 1162 (“SB 1162”), a “wage transparency law” that among other things, requires employers of 15 or more employees to include a pay scale in job postings, and for all employers to provide this information upon request. Large private employers also have new pay data reporting requirements.

The following changes will go into effect on January 1, 2023 under SB1162:

Pay Scale Information — for public and private employers:

• Employers with more than 15 employees will be required to include a pay scale in salary and hourly job postings, including third-party postings.
• All employers must provide current employees with a pay scale for their position upon request. Applicants are also entitled to this information upon reasonable request.
• All employers must maintain a record of each employee’s job title and wage history during their employment period and for three years thereafter. If the employer fails to keep these records, it creates a rebuttable presumption favoring employee claims.
• There is a new private right of action for injunctive relief or other relief.
• New civil penalties of $100 to $10,000 are authorized for any violation of the requirements for disclosure, recordkeeping, and other requirements of Labor Code section 432.3.

Annual Pay Data Report – for private employers only:

• Private employers with 100 or more employees must now submit an annual pay data report with new information on median and mean hourly rates by race, ethnicity, and sex within each job category, regardless of whether a federal EEO-1 form is required.
• Private employers with 100 or more employees hired through labor contractors must now submit a separate pay data report for those employees.
• Failure to provide the report can lead to civil penalties as high as $200 per employee.
• This information must now be submitted on or before the second Wednesday of May, including May 2023.

Takeaways for Employers:

• Pay Scale
  • Employers should prepare pay scales for each position, as this information may be requested by current employees and applicants.
  • For employers of 15 or more employees, establish policies and revise hiring processes to ensure compliance with new job posting requirements. Still to be clarified is whether employers seeking remote employees (who may or not work in California) must post pay scale information.
  • There may be more litigation because technical violations of the new pay scale requirements could lead to additional claims under the California Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”).
• Pay Data Report
  • Private employers of 100 or more employees (or contracted workers), should establish practices to collect and analyze the information for the pay data reports.
  • Consider whether your pay scale and pay data suggests adjustments are needed to increase pay equity.

Additional updates and information regarding these new requirements will follow. As always, please reach out to your employment counsel at Meyers Nave if you have any questions, concerns, needs for clarification or if you would like further assistance.

In the recent ruling of Rittiman v. Public Utilities Commission, the First District Court of Appeal held that the petitioner was not required to exhaust the administrative remedies of the California Public Utilities Commission (“CPUC”) prior to filing suit on his Public Records Act (“PRA”) request. The petitioner, Brandon Rittiman, argued that his appeal was constructively denied due to the CPUC’s lengthy delay in holding his appeals hearing.

In mid-November 2020, Brandon Rittiman submitted several PRA requests to the CPUC seeking “all documents, emails, or texts” between the CPUC president and her staff and the Governor’s staff. On November 30, 2020 the CPUC determined this communication was exempt under the Governor’s correspondence exemption and no records were produced. Rittiman appealed the decision and initiated its internal appeal process as prescribed by General Order 66-D. This multi-step administrative appeal process took over seven months. The Court found that the CPUC’s seven-month delay was “egregious by any measure.”

This case highlights that while agencies, including the CPUC, can adopt their own regulations that outline their process when responding to PRA requests, their regulations must correspond with the PRA. This includes making “records promptly available” and acting “with all due haste” in handling requests. The Court’s ruling ultimately upheld the CPUC’s denial of the petitioner’s PRA request but public agencies should take note of the fact that a prolonged administrative remedy process cannot be used to delay litigation over an agency’s decision to withhold public records.

The Regional Housing Needs Assessment (“RHNA”) statutory process enacted by the State Legislature is one of the critical tools needed to address the severe housing crisis facing California. Taking note of both prior precedent and the current historic pressure on housing stock, on June 20, 2022, the Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District issued its published decision holding that the RHNA allocation process for new housing units is immune from judicial review.

The case involves a writ action brought by four cities in the San Diego region challenging their share of new housing units allotted to them under the most recent RHNA cycle. The cities brought suit against Meyers Nave client, the San Diego Association of Governments (“SANDAG”), demanding a new hearing and a do over of the final RHNA allocation numbers for the entire region. In rejecting the cities appeal, the Court explained that the RHNA program is immune from judicial review by legislative design so as to prevent gridlock and delay in the housing allocation process. The case is City of Coronado et al. v. SANDAG, Case No. D079013, and the ruling can be found here.

The new City of Coronado decision draws heavily from a prior appellate court decision in City of Irvine v. Southern California Assn. of Governments, which rejected a challenge to the RHNA allocation process for the Southern California region based on lack of jurisdiction.

The City of Irvine opinion explains that the administrative process established under the RHNA statute to calculate a local government’s allocation of housing units is intended to be the exclusive remedy for a municipality to challenge the allocation thereby precluding judicial review of the decision.

The City of Irvine Court found that the length and intricacy of the process created to determine a municipality’s RHNA allocation reflects a clear intent on the part of the legislature to render the process immune from judicial intervention. Moreover, the City of Irvine ruling highlighted that allowing judicial review would delay the housing allocation for an entire region and essentially bottleneck the process and create gridlock while a particular city’s case winds its way through the courts.

In City of Coronado, the cities attempted to distinguish their case from City of Irvine based on an argument that their challenge was procedural in nature rather than a substantive challenge to the RHNA allocation and thus was not immune from judicial review. The City of Coronado Court rejected this position explaining that such a distinction only appeared in the cities’ briefing and that neither the City of Irvine opinion nor the RHNA statutory framework itself made such a distinction.

The City of Coronado opinion again reiterated that the same reasoning enumerated in City of Irvine applies with equal force here—namely allowing judicial review would create gridlock and delay the housing allocation for an entire region, bottlenecking the much needed process to increase housing stock throughout the state. The detailed nature of the recent ruling in City of Coronado, its extensive discussion and reliance on the prior City of Irvine opinion and the fact that the ruling is a published decision, all highlight that the courts are highly deferential to the RHNA legislative programs designed to help alleviate the ongoing housing crunch.

The Meyers Nave team representing SANDAG included Deborah J. Fox, Amrit S. Kulkarni and Margaret W. Rosequist.

The Ninth Circuit on June 15, 2022 issued its long-awaited en banc decision in Brach v. Newsom, holding that the challenge to the California’s Covid-19 restrictions on in-person schooling is now moot.  The appeal arose from a challenge by parents to the State’s orders closing schools for in-person learning at the beginning of the pandemic.  The challenge was brought by several parents, including those with kids in public and private schools.  After the District Court had granted the State’s summary judgment on the merits, schools were allowed to reopen and the original restrictions were rescinded altogether.  In the initial appeal, the Court ruled that this did not render the matter moot, affirmed summary judgment as to the public school parents’ claims, and reversed summary judgment with respect to the private school parents’ claims.  On rehearing the matter en banc, the Ninth Circuit has now ruled that the challenge is moot and the appeal was dismissed on that basis.

The panel first explained that the case was moot because none of the challenged restrictions were still in effect.  The only question was whether two exceptions to the mootness doctrine could apply: (1) the voluntary cessation doctrine or (2) the capable of repetition yet evading review exception.  The Court explained that neither exception applied for the same reason: the State adequately established the challenged restrictions were not reasonably expected to recur—the State had passed emergency legislation for online schooling that had already automatically expired; the State never closed any schools after they reopened; and the State continued to allow in-person schooling even when later Covid-19 case waves (such as Omicron) skyrocketed.

While this will prove to be a key decision in addressing the mootness of other litigation over expired Covid-19 restrictions, the Brach decision does not provide any bright line rules.  Instead, the Court was focused on a very fact-specific determination of whether the restrictions at issue were likely to recur.  Whether other plaintiffs may be able to establish one of the exceptions to mootness in their cases will therefore depend on the specific facts about whether the challenged restrictions may be re-imposed.

On June 15, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court resolved the long-awaited question whether individual claims brought under California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) can be compelled to arbitration. The Court ruled in favor of employers, holding that arbitration agreements can require employees to resolve individual PAGA claims in arbitration, even if they cannot do the same with the employee’s representative PAGA claims. While the Supreme Court left intact the California Supreme Court’s holding that employers cannot compel an entire PAGA claim into arbitration, employers in California may now compel arbitration on an employee’s individual PAGA claim (assuming the parties have entered an otherwise valid arbitration agreement). Most importantly, the Supreme Court held that compelling that individual claim into arbitration removes a plaintiff’s standing to bring her representative claims in court, meaning the court must dismiss the remaining representative claims.

What does this mean for California employers?

1. Although employers still cannot compel an entire PAGA claim into arbitration, actions can be divided into individual claims (i.e., claims based on violations the plaintiff suffered personally) and non-individual claims (i.e., representative claims on behalf of the state). An employer can compel the individual claim into arbitration, which removes those claims from the court action.
2. Most notably, the Court held that without those individual PAGA claims, a plaintiff cannot continue in court to raise the representative claims on behalf of other workers. As the Court put it, “PAGA provides no mechanism to enable a court to adjudicate non-individual PAGA claims once an individual claim has been committed to a separate proceeding.”
3. An employer may only take advantage of this approach if the employee has agreed to a valid arbitration clause, including severability language that preserves the employer’s ability to enforce arbitration on the individual claims even if the employer could not compel the representative claims into arbitration. Meyers Nave recommends you contact one of our labor and employment attorneys to assess your specific situation and determine if your current agreements meet these requirements.

An updated COVID-19 Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) took effect on Thursday, May 5, 2022, and will remain in effect through the rest of 2022. You can find a redline version of the ETS here, and the final version will eventually be located here. Some restrictions have been relaxed and employers may want to prepare accordingly.

What Stayed The Same?

The revised ETS still requires employers to perform contact tracing, notify employees of a potential exposure, screen employees for symptoms, provide exclusion pay to positive cases, and provide testing at no cost to symptomatic employees and close contacts. The definition of a “close contact” remains unchanged.

The ETS never had requirements regarding mandatory vaccination. Employers can continue to have policies that require employees to be vaccinated, with exceptions for reasonable accommodations. Employers may also maintain masking and testing policies that are more restrictive than the ETS.

What Is New?

This fourth version of the ETS aligns with California Department of Public Health (CDPH) regulations. Some highlights in the update include:

Vaccination Status No Longer Determinative: The ETS now treats all employees the same, regardless of their vaccination status.

Testing Obligations: When testing is required, employees may self-test (including at-home antigen tests) if the employee can provide “another means of independent verification of the results,” for example, using a time-stamped photograph.

Elimination of Cleaning Requirements: Employers are no longer required to implement cleaning and disinfecting procedures. Additionally, fixed partitions are no longer required when social distancing is impossible.

Relaxed Mask Regulations: Unless the CDPH indicates otherwise, employers need not require masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status.

Positive Cases: Upon testing positive, an employee must stay at home for at least five days from the onset of symptoms or five days from the date of the first positive test if there are no symptoms. If the employee tests negative and at least 24 hours have elapsed since the employee experienced fever or other symptoms, they may return to work. Employers must provide exclusion pay for the entire time the employee is isolated due to work-related exposure.

Symptomatic Employees: Current CDPH guidance encourages symptomatic employees, regardless of vaccination status or whether they previously had COVID-19, to both self-isolate and test as quickly as possible, isolating until testing results are in.

Takeaways for Employers

Employers may relax some of their COVID-19 protocols, and if they do, should update their COVID-19 Prevention Plans accordingly. For more detailed information about the ETS, visit Cal/OSHA’s ETS FAQ here. As always, please reach out to your employment counsel at Meyers Nave with any questions, concerns, needs for clarification, or emergencies you may have.