STAY AHEAD OF 2025’s LEGAL CHANGES -
Review your employee handbook and employment contracts for necessary updates on these changes to the law, effective January 1, 2025.
Employer Captive Audience Meetings are Banned (SB-399)
Effective January 1, 2025, SB 399 (or the California Worker Freedom from Employer Intimidation Act) amends the California Labor Code to impose limitations on Captive Audience meetings. SB 399 prohibits employers from subjecting, or threatening to subject, an employee to discharge, discrimination, or retaliation for declining to attend an employer-sponsored meeting or affirmatively declining to participate in, receive, or listen to communications, with employers about the employer’s opinion about religious or political matters. Furthermore, an employee who is working at the time of the meeting, but declines to attend, must continue to get paid while the meeting is held. Employers who violate this section shall be subject to a civil penalty of $500 per employee for each violation. This prohibition does not preclude, among other things, an employer from communicating to its employee information it required to communicate by law, or information necessary for those employees to perform their duties. Despite imposition of this ban, a question remains as to federal preemption by the National Labor Relations Act. Even so, employers should consider the need to make meetings mandatory or voluntary.
Please see full publication below for more information.
