Good afternoon, sorry about the delay again. Maybe I should just name these Monday Briefings and call it a day. I hope you had a nice holiday weekend, if you celebrate either holiday. We continue to pray for peace in the Ukraine, and I still can’t find any indication or news release that Mayor Garcetti signed the order lifting the LA vaccine mandate. He is all over Twitter, holding press daily releases and prayers for both Passover and Easter. Yet zero mention of ending the vaccine mandate, even back at the end of March when the City Council voted. I just think, it vanished, like COVID. Everywhere except China where apparently they are once again having a massive lockdown. So stay tuned on the possible ripple effects of that, either on COVID here or on the economic fallout.
I will say, I had my first live speaking engagement to a packed ballroom on Friday, in fact, to a ballroom full of California Appellate and Supreme Court Justices talking about the status of AB 5. And it felt good to be back doing live presentations. I just returned from a live client meeting with some of their executives and managers, which leads me to my topic of today.
YOU ARE ONLY AS STRONG AS YOUR WEAKEST MANAGER
As businesses have begun to really reopen after the last major shutdown in 2022, and as hiring has started to surge again, I have started to talk to clients about their plans for growth, expansion and planning in 2022 and beyond. And as so often happens in good years and bad, clients tell me that they don’t feel they have the luxury to do that kind of “planning.” They are just trying to plug holes, hire “warm” bodies, make up for the losses of the pandemic, get back on their feet, and “rebuild.” This year is going to be another one of those years where everyone just simply puts out fires and tries to stay above water. And that just lays the foundation where mistakes can so easily be made.
We can usually manage to get the handbooks updated and distributed. Especially if you are one of our clients, you may have that on auto-pilot now. But what are you doing to make sure your team is tight? How sure are you that what YOU know has trickled down? First, that all your managers know these tricky labor laws. But not only that they know the laws, but that they are making good judgment calls about those laws. After the pandemic has dissipated, we are still in California and those labor laws did not go away, my friends. Nor did all those lawyers who still make a living by enforcing those laws. All those COVID lawsuits they predicted, well, they never really materialized. The lawyers stuck with what they know – missed meal and rest breaks, overtime, working off the clock, leaves of absence and harassment. We are back to where we started and those cases are not going anywhere.
And you’re thinking, Beth, I know this. You preach this to us every week. I read your Briefings now. Good – that’s a start. But the problems are rarely executed by upper management. What are the people below you doing? Every day? Day in and day out? Because it is not just a matter of what you put in your handbooks, but what the people you call managers are doing, every day. And the people who are assistant managers. Or even supervisors, or shift leads. And can you say for certain that every one of them knows every nuance of the Labor Code. And the leave of absence laws. And more importantly, do they understand the significance of not allowing an employee to work a second off the clock, or editing one tenth of an hour without their permission. How much are you willing to bet? YOUR WHOLE COMPANY? Because every one of them has the ability to make a single decision that could risk that. And yet, do you take the time to teach all of them about the intricacies of these laws? These laws are confusing to people I spoke to last week – the California Appellate and Supreme Court Justices! Let alone some of your shift leads who may not even speak English. How much time in the last year, or two, or three, teaching them about any of this?
So let me tell you about the number of times we have gotten a lawsuit or a demand letter that alleges some bad fact happened, and I sit down to go over it with my client. And my client says to me “oh, THAT didn’t happen. This former employee is making that up! My company doesn’t do things that way. I know this!” So I say, “Of course not. We have represented you for years, write your handbook, prepare your forms, etc. But humor me, go ask around, talk to some of your trusted “inside” rank and file employees, and see what you can find out”. And come to find out, to everyone’s surprise, some “rogue” manager, maybe someone who has already left, engaged in some shady practices. And then we find out, maybe it was more than one manager. And maybe it was for more than a short while. Or maybe it’s still going on.
This happens all the time, by the way. It doesn’t always take a lawsuit to discover this type of conduct. Sometimes employees come forward and report this behavior in real time. Recently, we had a few employees reveal a practice as they were leaving the company. A manager was having an entire department work off the clock at lunch, record it timely, but in actuality, the employees were taking their lunch well past the five hour mark – for a decade. The company owed the employees well into the six figures in past meal break violations. But had it been a true class action, that money would have run into the millions with penalties and attorneys’ fees. Occasionally, we get reports on anonymous reporting hotlines or apps (I am going to give you a plug for my app kendr in a bit). But however we learn about it, my client usually feels shocked and betrayed by their managers.
But in reality, it is us as employers who have not been doing our jobs. Because as my title suggests, we are only as strong as our weakest link, or here, our weakest manager. And how can we truly expect our managers to be doing their best if we don’t give them the tools to succeed? Who are these managers? You are not hiring people who have been trained to do these jobs. We put pressure on our leaders to cut costs and make labor budgets, but are you giving them the tools in which to do that? And are you truly teaching them the ramifications for cutting corners of the law? Or do you look the other way. Really, what do we expect to happen?
Most of you know that in 2020, you had to provide sexual harassment training to managers and staff. You will need to do that every two years, which means it is time again in 2022. It doesn’t have to be live training, but if you do not take the opportunity to train your managers live, you are losing out on an opportunity to really hear from them and talk to them as well. Plus, I suggest that you take this year and add a module about management skills and employment law. And you don’t have to do it in person if that’s tough. While I joke about doing things over zoom, the pandemic did teach us how to do these zoom trainings really efficiently. We can do them in small groups and still have great engagement, at a very effective cost. However you do it, do it. Have those meetings. TRAIN YOUR MANAGERS. Can you afford NOT to?
Also, anonymous reporting. Most of you know about the app I helped start, but if you need to have the contact info, it’s at www.kendr.com. I can get you more information, of course.
FAREWELL TO RICARDO ROZEN – I ALREADY MISS YOU
Just a quick note to say goodbye to my second lieutenant and one of my favorite associates of all time (and in 37 years, there have been many). I know Ricky reached out to many of you, and he will be here on the receiving end of these emails now, since he is going in-house and will be having the challenges that many of you have . I’m already feeling the emotional hole that his absence has created, although never has a departing attorney worked so hard to catch me up on all my cases before he has left. And although our department will be fine, as departments always are, we will miss Ricky, and I wanted to share with you all my personal thank you to him for the last four years he has given us, and you, for his talents, his work ethic, and his integrity. Those of you who know Ricky know what I mean.
By the way, given that the COVID news has slowed and the frenzied nature of California employment law has eased back down to its usual pace of just mere annoyance, I may go to doing these Briefings more like every other week, or as needed. I think fluidity in this post-pandemic world will be the name of the game.
Continue to breathe and stay safe, my friends. It’s still a wee bit dicey out there.
#StandWithUkraine