Do companies violate California labour law by not giving uninterrupted 10 minute breaks for each 4 hours of interviews? In the software engineering industry, it's very often that the final stage of the interview is an onsite in California, where you spend a minimum of 3.5h doing the interviews; expenses are normally paid, but your time itself isn't normally compensated. It is not uncommon to have 6h to 8h of back-to-back interviews, which are normally interrupted only for lunch, which itself is often on-site without leaving the potential place of employment, and in SF Bay Area, you're almost always accompanied for the lunch as well. If a single non-exempt employee would happen to interviews you for 3.5h (e.g., for a simulation of an actual work day using XP pair programming methodology, which is strangely rare), they'd be legally entitled for a 10-minute break themselves, hence, you'll very likely get a proper uninterrupted 15 minute break as well: https://www.calchamber.com/california-labor-law/meal-and-rest-breaks Employers must authorize and permit uninterrupted rest breaks for all nonexempt employees whose total daily work time is at least 3.5 hours. These mandatory rest breaks must be offered at the rate of 10 minutes for every four hours worked, or "major fraction" thereof. Anything over two hours is considered by the courts to be a "major fraction" of four. However, outside of pair programming, you often get a different person for each hour of the onsite. These folks manage their own breaks on their own time, whereas you the interviewee have a fixed schedule, and usually don't get any official uninterrupted breaks in the schedule for the whole 6 to 8 hours of the onsite. Is that legal?
The interviewee is not an employee At least, not yet. As such, employment law does not apply to them. For the interviewer(s), we have insufficient information As a general rule, and insofar as practicable, the rest break must be in the middle of each four-hour work period. In an eight hour day, one rest break normally falls on either side of the meal break. However, the rest breaks can be taken at any time by mutual agreement.
Once I figured out the term I was looking for was &quot;cooling off period&quot; a google search led to this SFGate article which seems to say, no, there is no cooling off period in California. breaking a lease, even before moving into a new home, can be a legal challenge. If you must cancel a lease before moving in, be prepared for a financial loss and possible legal difficulties. And this article There is no &quot;cooling off&quot; period for residential releases. In some states, a cooling off period is required for certain contracts, which give signers a window of time, typically one to three days, during which they can void the contract if they change their mind. Unless such a condition is explicitly stated in the lease or there is a rare jurisdictional law that requires a cooling period, your lease is binding the second you sign your name. So, the answer to my question is &quot;No, there is no grace period&quot; and that my current apartment, with the 3 day exception was just a kind offer on their part. I'd just guess because they're a large firm (they run ~80k apartments) they've learned it's better to let people go if they change their mind in 3 days than go through the trouble of forcing them to honor the lease. Interestingly, and related IMO, there is also no cooling off period for car purchases. I thought there was which is why I thought there might also be one for apartments since, at least in California, many apartments yearly rent is more than the entire cost of a car. (avg in SF is $40k a year) But, at least in California, if it's a used car and if the car costs less than $40k, the dealer is required to offer you the option to purchase a 2-day cancellation clause for around 1% of the car's price.
Yes. It will hold up in court. IMHO, there is no difference in the admissible portions of the two testimonies. "Few minutes" vs. "One hour" is immaterial The difference between "a few minutes" and "one hour" IMHO is immaterial given: the witness was unconscious and say, between 45 and 60 minutes would match both descriptions of the time interval. What other people saw and heard is hearsay Testimony about what other people saw and heard (with a few notable exceptions) is hearsay and not allowed into evidence because it is generally unreliable and not subject to cross-examination. So after the rejection of the hearsay portions, there is no difference in the admissible portions of the two versions. Qualification By "hold up in court," I mean it will be allowed as evidence. The weight and veracity of the testimony would be determined by the (judge or) jury after cross-examination.
No The argument is vacuous in any event because AFAIK all jurisdictions that enforce sex discrimination laws have parental leave (paid or unpaid), not maternity leave so a man is just as likely to need it as a woman. This, of course, raises the issue of discrimination by marital status (on the basis that unmarried people are arguably less likely to have children) or age (on the basis that people outside 'childbearing' age are less likely to have children; fortunately these types of discrimination are also illegal. Notwithstanding, the loopholess you think there are in the laws are simply not there. For example s14 "Discrimination in employment or in superannuation" of australia Sex Discrimination Act 1984 starts with: (1) It is unlawful for an employer to discriminate against a person on the ground of the person's sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, marital or relationship status, pregnancy or potential pregnancy, breastfeeding or family responsibilities: Later in s30 "Certain discrimination on ground of sex not unlawful" it says: (2) (a) the duties of the position can be performed only by a person having particular physical attributes (other than attributes of strength or stamina) that are not possessed by persons of a different sex from the relevant sex; If the job requires excessive strength or stamina, then you test your recruits for the level of strength or stamina the job requires.
Employees are only required to work in the sense that refusal to report can result in discipline (like reprimand or firing) and forfeit of whatever money you would have earned had you shown up. This is exactly the same way federal employees (or most employees, for that matter) are always required to work. The fact that they're not being paid on time has nothing to do with whether it's slavery. That's because pay has nothing to do with slavery. Slavery is forced labor and/or ownership of people, and civilian federal employees are just as free to quit as they normally are. Military personnel can't freely quit, but they can never freely quit. Nothing relevant has changed for either group. Not paying employees is potentially a violation of labor law, and the government in fact lost a lawsuit after the last shutdown for violating the FLSA. If that happens this time too, they'll have to pay damages.
Your employer is most likely bluffing. It is better to be fired than to quit voluntarily. The problem with quitting voluntarily is that you won't get unemployment benefits (Arbeitslosengeld I) for a while. So don't quit voluntarily if you aren't keen on living from savings for three months. If you want to quit, get another job first. (You should get another job anyway instead of working for a toxic employer.) Your employer can only terminate your employment under certain circumstances, and with certain notice periods. Germany is very employee-friendly. Your company's establishment is currently large enough that the Kündigungsschutzgesetz (KSchG) applies. To be clear, it doesn't matter how large the company is overall, only how many employees there are in the office, shop, or other place of business. Part-time employees are counted partially. Contractors are counted as well. The KSchG fully applies if there are typically more than 10 (11 or more) employees. The KSchG does not apply to company leadership, e.g. C-level executives. Under the KSchG, the employer can terminate employment for one of three reasons: reasons in your person, reasons in your behavior, and operational reasons Personenbedingte Kündigung: Your employment can be terminated for reasons in your person if you are unable to carry out work in the future, for example if you need sick days so frequently that this puts an unreasonable burden on the employer. It is generally impossible to use this reason without the normal notice periods. Verhaltensbedingte Kündigung: You can be fired for reasons in your behavior if you committed some gross misconduct. Typically this requires an Abmahnung (written warning) so that you have opportunity to cease the problematic behavior. For example, you might get an Abmahnung the first time you skip a shift, and get fired the second time. In especially severe cases of misconduct, it is possible to skip the Abmahnung and/or the notice period and to fire an employee on the spot. For example, this might happen if you embezzled funds or stole your employer's property, even if the monetary damage was very small. As such dismissal with cause stems from your behavior, you would not get unemployment benefits for three months. Betriebsbedingte Kündigung: If the company has to downsize for economic reasons, it can lay off workers. However, the employer must apply social criteria for selecting the employees to lay off. Factors are: the length of employment, age, support obligations for children or other dependents, and disability status. That is, a young, new, childless and able-bodied employee is more likely to get axed. If you have a union (Betriebsrat) they can veto a termination in certain cases. These criteria can be clarified via collective bargaining agreements, but cannot be circumvented in an individual contract. So your employer will not be able to find any error in the contract that will allow them to fire you. The best they could do is to go really carefully over your application and paperwork to find any misrepresentation, and use that as the basis for a Verhaltensbedingte Kündigung. However, it is quite unlikely that they will find a misrepresentation so severe that it could serve as grounds for firing you without notice. Minimum notice periods are given in law. The minimum is one month notice. Your contract cannot have a shorter notice period in your context. In case of a dismissal for exceptional reasons (e.g. theft), no notice period is necessary. If you are terminated, go to a lawyer. You only have three weeks to file a lawsuit. Contacting the lawyer should be the second thing you do after getting fired, with the first thing being the registration with the Arbeitsagentur to start the clock for unemployment benefits. If your employer is making unprofessional threats like claiming that there could be a “critical error” in your contract, it is quite possible that the termination notice could be deficient in some way. If the dismissal was improper, a court can award compensation (lost wages) and reinstate the employment, though this is unlikely to be desired. Your wage from subsequent jobs (or wages you could have earned if you had looked for a job) will be subtracted from the lost wages. To summarize this large text dump, firing an employee is difficult unless the employee does something very stupid like stealing from the employer. Therefore: reasonable employers that want to get rid of an employee don't look for errors in the contract. Instead: They watch you very closely to find any behavior that merits a written warning (Abmahnung). This builds a case for a termination with cause. They offer an agreement to terminate the contract (Aufhebungsvertrag). With such an agreement you mutually terminate the employment. You won't get unemployment benefits for three months since this was your decision, so typically these agreements provide for generous compensation. A reasonable employer knows that paying for the notice period + additional compensation is cheaper than dealing with an unhappy employee + a potentially invalid termination + a prolonged legal battle. Of course, less reasonable employers resort to bullying to get you to quit yourself. This is cheaper than paying compensation with an Aufhebungsvertrag.
How should I proceed? I am asking law friends to recommend some employment lawyers, but other than this, can I do anything else? You definitely don't need an employment lawyer for this. From a legal standpoint, the matter is very simple: If you grant their request (whether by signing or otherwise expressing your acceptance), you would be waiving any remedies currently available to you for their breach of contract. The company's attempt to override its contract with you is quite naive, but the company can always (and evidently does) try to get away with its liability nonetheless. I would not be surprised if the company subsequently tries harder to intimidate you, but that does not change your legal position &amp; merits unless you sign the waiver the company is pursuing. Asking for your post-termination availability reinforces the notion of company's poor planning and subpar management.
This practice is probably not illegal, but I think it is at best ethically dubious. The invoice specifies &quot;&quot;Advising in relation to employment agreement with X&quot;, but according to the question no advice about X was given or even asked for, and while advice about Y was discussed, no such advice was given. That suggests that the asker owes the solicitor nothing. However the asker was informed of the hourly charge and then continued to discuss the issue. it could be argued that the constitutes an implicit contract to pay that rate for those discussions. It seems that the asker never said &quot;does that rate apply to this telephone call&quot;, nor did the solicitor say &quot;that hourly clock starts now if you want to continue&quot;. This leaves the situation less clear than it could have been. The second email, as described, seems to imply that the work of giving advice had not yet commenced, and thus no fee was due for services to date. A person in this situation could reply with a letter (sent by email or postal mail or better both) saying that no advice was given, no useful service was performed, and there was no agreement to pay for any service, so no fee is due. If the solicitor takes this to a court case, the asker may well want to consider consulting a different legal professional. This is a case where the exact facts may well matter, so no more precise answer can, I think, be given here.