Labor & Employment Law Blog

On March 29, 2021, the California Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling involving the State’s prevailing wage law, holding for the first time that the law’s requirements could be applied to employees who performed work for a private employer under a contract with a sanitation district.  (Kaanaana v. B. Bus. Servs., Inc., No. S253458, 2021 WL 1166963 (Cal. Mar. 29, 2021))  Prior to this decision, the law had generally been interpreted to apply only to construction work pursuant to a contract entered into with a public entity.

On October 22, 2018, the California Court of Appeal followed the California Supreme Court’s guidance in Dynamex, and differentiated between a taxi driver’s Industrial Welfare Committee Wage Order claims, and non-Wage Order claims. (Garcia v. Border Transportation Group, LLC (D072521, Court of Appeal, 4th App. Dist. Div. 1).  In line with the Supreme Court’s decision, the Court of Appeal applied the ABC independent contractor test to Wage Order claims, while leaving other wage and hour claims for evaluation under the multi-factor Borello test.  The Wage Orders regulate basic working conditions for California employees, including minimum wage, meal breaks, and rest periods.