The California Employment Lawyers Association (CELA) is pleased to welcome you to the 2022 NELA Annual Convention – live and in-person – in the great state of California. Among sunshine, beaches, grueling traffic, and celebrity culture, the Golden State is proud to be known for its robust workers’ rights laws, thanks largely to one of the most deserving celebrities, labor organizer Cesar Chavez, whose birthday the state honors on March 31 each year. CELA is proud to do its part to build on the legacy of Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and all the countless, nameless advocates for workers’ rights. CELA’s Legislative Counsel & Policy Director (and 2019 NELA honoree) Mariko Yoshihara, Policy Associate Ken Wang, and CELA Legislative Committee member volunteers work relentlessly on behalf of California workers to strengthen and expand workplace protections. The California legislature spent much of the last two years struggling with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on California’s working families. CELA fought to expand supplemental paid sick leave to ensure workers can take time off for COVID-related reasons. CELA supported several other pandemic-related bills signed into law in 2021, including important measures to provide pandemic exposure notification and protections for workers (AB 654) and to create new rights for hospitality industry employees laid off because of the pandemic (SB 93). On the heels of the #MeToo movement, CELA co-sponsored the landmark “Silenced No More Act” which limits nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) and non-disparagement clauses in settlement and severance agreements (SB 331). CELA also sponsored legislation to create health and safety standards for domestic workers (SB 321), and to strengthen procedural safeguards for workers forced into arbitration (SB 762). This bill expanded prior CELA-backed legislation making a failure to pay arbitration fees within 30 days of the due date a breach of the arbitration agreement, allowing the worker to go to court and have their case heard by a jury. It also includes a provision for an award of sanctions including attorneys’ fees. This year, we have yet another full slate of important bills, covering a wide range of issues affecting California workers. CELA is co-sponsoring SB 1162 to enhance California’s existing pay data reporting framework. The bill will require employers to provide a salary range on all public job postings, and to announce promotional opportunities to all employees before any promotion decision is made. Employers with 250 or more employees must publicly report aggregate pay data broken down by race, ethnicity, and sex for both direct employees and employees hired through a third-party staffing agency. We are backing legislation to expand California’s leave laws to create a right to five days of job-protected bereavement leave (AB 1949) and to broaden the definition within those laws to include care for chosen family (AB 2182). We are also sponsoring legislation to prohibit discrimination based on family caregiving responsibilities (AB 1041) and to prohibit the unwarranted disclosure of immigration status in open court proceedings (SB 836). Finally, we are working in close partnership with a broad coalition of worker and consumer advocates to introduce landmark legislation that will create new rights for workers over electronic monitoring and AI management systems at work (AB 1651). The global COVID-19 pandemic has affected all our lives. We are excited NELA has chosen California to host the first in-person Convention in three years. This year, CELA is delighted to see one of its Executive Board members and Legislative Committee co-chair, Menaka Fernando, honored with the NELA Spotlight Award. Menaka’s significant contributions and passion for workers’ rights inspire hope for a brighter future. Please join us in congratulating Menaka on this well-deserved honor! While you’re in San Francisco, we hope you will enjoy some of the beauty the city offers. Whether you are strolling in one of the many parks, admiring the murals of the Mission District, or exploring the variety of global cuisine San Francisco is known for, we invite you to revel in the Golden City. In solidarity,
Laura Horton, CELA Chair 2022 NELA ANNUAL CONVENTION
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