California continues to be a hotbed of activity, which got me wondering: what is a hotbed? So I looked it up.

Hotbed – noun – hot·bed |  \ ˈhät-ˌbed

/a bed of soil enclosed in glass, heated especially by fermenting manure, and used for forcing or for raising seedlings/

And now you can decide which is more useful- knowing what a hotbed is or keeping up with the latest legislation in California that makes things harder for businesses.

The latest is AB51, which bans mandatory employee arbitration agreements if they are made a condition of employment. Voluntary arbitration agreements are still permitted.

So let’s just include an opt-out provision, right? That way there’s a choice, so it’s not mandatory. That would seem to make sense. Not so fast. The law says that if you include an opt-out provision, it still counts as mandatory. Huh? That’s contrary to the meaning of opt-out.

Opt – verb \ ˈäpt

/to make a choice/

If the option to opt-in is voluntary, then the option to opt-out is voluntary. Grammarians needed in California please.

The law is also probably illegal, except maybe for jobs in the transportation industry. According to the Supreme Court, the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) prohibits states from enacting laws that treat agreements to arbitrate differently than other agreements. If the parties agree to arbitrate, there’s an enforceable contract, and the states need to get out of the way. That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but not by much. The FAA doesn’t apply to portions of the interstate transportation industry though, so the California law might be enforceable only as to that small segment of jobs. The enforceability of this law will be tested in the courts.

The law also creates a chicken-and-egg problem for independent contractor misclassification disputes. You can still require in an independent contractor agreement that an independent contractor must arbitrate disputes. And in that arbitration agreement, you can grant the arbitrator the authority to rule on any questions about enforceability of the arbitration agreement.

But what if the dispute is over whether the independent contractor is an employee? If the California law stands, then the agreement to arbitrate the dispute is enforceable only if the arbitrator rules that the contractor is properly classified as a contractor, but the agreement to arbitrate is unenforceable if the arbitrator rules that the contractor is misclassified and should really be an employee. But if the arbitrator rules that contractor was really an employee, then under California law the agreement granting the arbitrator the right to make that decision is void. You’d have to decide the ultimate issue — independent contractor s employee — before determining who decides whether the worker is a contractor or an employee.

Is your head spinning? Good. Just in time for Halloween.

Thanks California. You give me lots to write about.

This new law applies to employee arbitration agreements entered into after January 1, 2020– unless it’s not enforceable at all. We’ll see.

© 2019 Todd Lebowitz, posted on WhoIsMyEmployee.com, Exploring Issues of Independent Contractor Misclassification and Joint Employment. All rights reserved.

Need training on avoiding independent contractor misclassification claims? Hey, I do that!