Our colleague Michael Kun, attorney at Epstein Becker Green, has a post on the Wage & Hour Defense Blog that will be of interest to many of our readers in the hospitality industry: “Clarification of California’s Obscure 'Suitable Seating' Wage Rule Likely to Lead to More Employers Providing Seats – and to More Class Actions Against Those Who Don’t."
Following is an excerpt:
The Court explained, “There is no principled reason for denying an employee a seat when he spends a substantial part of his workday at a single location performing tasks that could reasonably be done while seated, merely because his job duties include other tasks that must be done standing.”
The California Supreme Court’s opinion should help employers assess whether and when to make seating available to employees. And employers should review their practices promptly to try to comply with the law. Now that the California Supreme Court has provided some much needed guidance on the issue, employers can expect that their practices will be challenged, and those challenges will often come in the context of class action lawsuits.