Will it be a truly Happy New Year for your business?

It depends on how prepared you are for 21 new laws that may be affecting your business, that is!

Staying up-to-date and compliant is essential to making the new year both happy and profitable for your organization. Today, Exact Staff offers some help. In the second of our two-part series, we summarize two more laws that should be on your radar.

If you missed the first post on California employment laws that went into effect January 1, 2015, you can read that by viewing our recent blog posts.

While this review is not intended as legal advice, it will help you better understand the immediate impact the new legislation will have on California organizations and the long term impact they may have on organizations across the country– as well as the ways our staffing firm can help.

1. AB 1650 (Requesting Criminal Conviction Information)

What you need to know:

Commonly known as the “Fair Chance Employment Act,” AB 1650 prohibits certain contractors (those who submit a bid to the state for a job involving on-site, construction-related services) from asking applicants of those jobs to disclose – either verbally or in writing – information about their criminal conviction history.

While this law is quite specific in terms of the jobs covered, it is part of the larger issue of background check compliance that’s a hot topic for many businesses today. Continually changing laws, and an increasingly vigilant Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), have made the process of protecting your company – and making great hires – more complex and risky than ever.

The best way to stay compliant? Create a comprehensive background check policy that is in writing, uses objective criteria, and is applied to every candidate in the same way.

How Exact Staff can help:

• Bring in temporary employees to provide support when needed. As their employer of record, we assume all risks and liabilities related to their screening and hiring.
• Allow us to handle your recruiting. We stay up-to-date on the rapidly changing world of hiring law. Trust us to screen candidates properly, perform legal background checks and reference interviews on your behalf, and then present the best candidates to you.

2. AB 1897 (Joint Employer Liability for Labor Provider’s Wage and Hour Violations)

What you need to know:

Under the new Labor Code section 2810.3, if a “labor contractor” (such as a staffing firm) fails to pay required wages or to secure adequate workers’ compensation coverage, the organization for whom the workers are providing services “shall share with the labor contactor all civil legal responsibility and civil liability for all workers supplied” to the company.

AB 1897:

• Contains several exemptions from its coverage (e.g., employers with fewer than 25 workers, non-profits and union hiring halls).
• Includes detailed criteria for defining what a “labor contractor” is and isn’t.
• Specifically prohibits any attempt to contract around the law’s requirements.
• Does NOT prevent an organization from contracting for indemnification by the labor contractor for its wage and hour violations.

How Exact Staff can help:

If you’re concerned about potential co-employment liabilities, just give us a call. Our experts are here to explain everything we do to comply with all federal, state and local legislation related to paying required wages and securing valid workers’ compensation coverage.