Workforce Bulletin

The Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) Office of Labor Standards (OLS) adopted new rules for administering Chicago’s Fair Workweek and Paid Leave and Paid Sick and Safe Leave Ordinances. The new rules were published on May 18, 2026, and went into effect on June 1, 2026. A separate blog post addressing the new rules to the Fair Workweek Ordinance can be found here. Without re-hashing all the details about compliance obligations under the Paid Leave and Paid Sick and Safe Leave Ordinance, here’s a summary of what’s important to know as these rules go into force.

As the Southern California wildfires rage on with devastating consequences, employers may be grappling to formulate an appropriate response. Employers may have specific legal obligations as well as optional ways to provide assistance to affected employees. This publication addresses applicable employment laws that implicate pay, leaves, and other aspects of employment that may be impacted by the wildfires. Employers should also review our publication on special benefits they may wish to provide.

Employer Obligations

Notice Requirement for New Hires

California law requires employers to provide non-exempt employees with a wage theft notice upon hire. Among other requirements, employers must notify employees if there is a state or federal emergency or disaster declaration applicable to the county or counties where the employee will work issued within 30 days before the employee’s first day of employment that may affect their health and safety. Accordingly, employers in Los Angeles and Ventura counties will need to notify non-exempt employees starting employment within thirty days after January 7, 2025 that the Governor issued an Emergency Proclamation related to the wildfires if the emergency may affect their health and safety during their employment.

For decades, many employers have rounded non-exempt employees’ work time when calculating their compensation.  Maybe they have rounded employee work time to the nearest 10 minutes, maybe to the nearest quarter hour, but they done it. And, generally, the courts have approved of the practice.

But as more and more lawsuits are filed challenging the practice, and as the courts begin to review time-rounding more frequently and more critically, the question employers with time-rounding policies should ask themselves today is this:  Why are we still rounding our employees’ time?

California law generally requires employers to pay non-exempt employees a premium of one hour of pay for non-compliant meal and rest periods. Employers have typically paid such premiums by using the employees’ standard hourly rates. A new California Supreme Court decision requires employers to pay premiums at a higher rate when employees receive nondiscretionary compensation. This change in the law not only will require employers to adjust how they calculate meal and rest period premiums going forward, but it also exposes some of them to litigation for their past practices if ...

For more than 80 years, federal law has provided a general right to premium pay for working overtime hours, originally just for covered employees, then later for employees of covered enterprises.  The laws of more than 30 states contain a comparable requirement, though in some instances differing in the particulars.

This presumptive right to the overtime premium is, of course, subject to the familiar exemption construct whereby individuals whose employment satisfies one or more of the dozens of exempted categories fall outside the premium pay requirement.  Many of the most ...

With the end of the year just around the corner, many employers may be contemplating giving year-end bonuses to their non-exempt employees. And bonuses, year-end or otherwise, can create problems for employers when it comes to calculating overtime compensation for those employees.

One mistake some employers make concerns calculating an employee’s regular rate for purposes of paying overtime premiums.  Indeed, many employers have found truth in the adage “no good deed goes unpunished” after implementing bonus policies or issuing other forms of compensation intended to ...

Given the ongoing considerations businesses face with the COVID-19 health crisis, many employers have increased the amount of teleworking for employees, including many roles that ordinarily would not telework.  As the COVID-19 health crisis has progressed, employers have continued to extend their teleworking policies while other employers are gearing up to reopen offices.  With these ongoing health risks, it is important for employers to review their teleworking policies and practices to ensure that they are appropriately compensating employees under the Fair Labor ...

California law has specific requirements regarding the payment of overtime to employees. An employer’s failure to pay overtime—or failure to pay the correct overtime rate—can result in a litany of unintended Labor Code violations, which, in turn, can lead to enormous liability. Therefore, it is critical that employers understand when overtime is due and how to calculate the overtime rate of pay.

1.   When is overtime pay due?

In California, the general overtime requirement is that a nonexempt employee shall receive a premium of at least:

• One and one-half times the employee’s ...

Given the number of states that have already ordered the closure of non-essential businesses due to the COVID-19 pandemic, employers fortunate to remain operational are likely dealing with the myriad challenges of a remote workforce.

As we previously wrote here, employers with work-from-home (“WFH”) policies in place need to make sure they are appropriately compensating their workers and are otherwise complying with all applicable federal, state, and local wage and hour laws.

In the WFH context, the related wage and hour concepts of “waiting time” and “on-call ...

As the number of U.S. states reporting cases of COVID-19 coronavirus increases, many employers are imposing mandatory work from home (“WFH”) policies to mitigate risk of contamination and ensure business continuity.  Some employers are requiring employees who have travelled to or received visitors from mainland China (or other areas with high infection rates) and those with fever or other flu-like symptoms to remain at home for 14 days, while others are instructing half or more, up to their entire workforce, to work remotely until further notice.  Whatever the form, employers ...