State Labor Laws And California

State labor laws are a different and often more specific form of laws, it's beneficial to check into the state in which you work to see their state laws and see if your workplace or a workplace you know of is abiding by them. In some offices and places of employment you may find State Labor Law Posters or Safety Posters on the walls or located in the main break areas so that employees have ample opportunity to know their rights in the workplace. Here we will go over some various state labor laws that you may find interesting to help us to understand the general state of worker rights in some states. For an example, lets take some rights and regulations you may find on some California labor law posters. One is the Family and Medical Leave Act, an act protecting medical leaves, which is also filed under the California Family Rights Act.

This act was put into place due to a rampant issue of employees receiving disciplinary action due to taking medical leave, either for themselves or to help care for a sick family member, such as a husband or child who could not effectively care for themselves without help. Parental Leave was also subject to the same negative repercussions in the workplace. Surveys were conducted and it was found that one in six workers were disciplined by their employers, either with threats, suspensions or full termination due to taking medical leave. Because of this atmosphere of fear and substantial risk most employees were either unable to safely take offered medical leave due to fear for their jobs, or were not offered any paid sick leave at all in the state of California, particularly in the case of low-income employees. Laws were laid down with these acts that made it more difficult for employers to take disciplinary action against their employees for no reason other than taking time off work for medical reasons.

Employers main argument against these state laws are the fact that it is difficult to be sure employees aren't abusing their time off for non-medical reasons and reporting the incidents as sick leave and getting paid for it, which leaves the employer feeling taken advantage of financially. In many low-income families medical leave is still a luxury and many employees will still report to work sick, since often their sick-leave is unpaid and they risk losing income if they try to take time off or report to the doctor for any reason. This leads to the problem of illness being spread through the workplace due to sick employees coming to work and interacting with co-workers, touching the office equipment, tools, etc, which causes any contagious or germ-borne virus to spread quickly through the workplace, which ultimately leads to reduced productivity in the establishment. No laws in California are currently in place to help in the instances of low-income employees having no paid sick leave and in turn working while ill.