Court rules California employers must pay employee cell phone expenses
dlapiper.com
dlapiper.com
edit: I recalled a situation at a previous employer for an ops person who had significant work usage of his cell phone; our employer didn't want to pay for it. I'm not sure how that got resolved. Though this employer had pictures of naked women as part of the interview process so, you know, all class. (I didn't get that for my screen, but others did.)
[1] http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-02/security-che...
Or, how about an employee who wants to use their own phone so that they only have to carry one (BYOD) and not a company-supplied one.
I guess you're just being facetious in your 'ahmahgahd we're being repressed by The Man' but there are circumstances enough where both ways of looking at it are reasonable.
Particularly for these types of ambiguous use items, I would expect savvy companies to be maximizing this benefit, not minimizing it.
Often times paying out compensation in cash like this is just too expensive. It's a weird concept that the cost of cash is a curve mostly dictated by tax rates. When the IRS is taking 55% at certain points in the curve, you get much bigger bang for the buck by offering other benefits, like maximizing expense reimbursements. (phone, internet, qualified commuting expenses, food & entertainment, etc.)
So what does this mean? Likely not triggered by simply storing my mobile number on the internal groupware contacts card.
However, if I'm in services or sales, and I travel a lot - I would now be in a position where I need to be available - would that be considered "as a condition of employment"?
Examples would make this a lot easier to navigate.
Remember that widely reported employment numbers count minimum wage jobs and highly-paid jobs the same way. In other words one could say that CA is gaining, not losing, jobs yet when you dig into the data you discover that jobs that pay well are leaving and the ranks are being filled by people taking pay and standard of living cuts.
It's interesting to come to the realization that the average Joe and Jane has no clue as to what a business equation looks like, how businesses run and how costs and legislation affect numbers.
You can't keep taking from people and businesses forever without consequences. This isn't a politically charged statement, this is simple mathematics. Eventually we succeed at killing off our own source of income when they decide to pull-up anchor and move to more reasonable shores (sometimes literally). Both businesses and people have choices.
The big software companies and well-funded startups continue to flock to the state. Obviously not as much as before for the simple reason that the Valley is only so big and living expenses are a very substantial part of the cost, but that has little to do with employee regulation (which is comparatively weak in the US compared to many other developed nations for which, apparently, it ain't much of a problem) and more to do with the cost of living in other areas such as housing demand and infrastructure.
Other states and countries should consider that a good working environment, not just in the office but in the protections afforded to employees, is pretty damn attractive for talented individuals.
The world is a different place than it used to be in the dotcom boom; tech talent has a lot more options nowadays and those things add up.
You are welcome to move to a place that permits employees to be abused.
The hardest problem I have is hiring good people: Not taxes.
If a business wants to move to out of the largest economy in the U.S. -- well then it is making an interesting choice that other businesses will take advantage of.
Funny thing is that Rick Perry has been trying oh so hard to get businesses to move to Texas... but if the best employees are in California then that means a business is trading lower taxes for lower quality workers. That too is an interesting choice.
Another way to put it is: You can build a massively successful business anywhere in the country. There is no particular magic in California in this regard. What is different here is that it cost more to simply exist in this state. And there's far more to it than wages at play.
Here is the TL;DR:
Businesses want the benefit of low taxes (lower immediate expenses) with the benefit of high taxes locations (government provide services that the business would otherwise have to pay).
But low tax utopia fails if no one pays high taxes needed to provide the services.
Longer explanation here:
http://sworddance.com/blog/2014/10/23/california-is-awesome-...
and here:
http://sworddance.com/blog/2014/10/23/low-business-tax-utopi...
Quick example. There's something in the County of Los Angeles called "Business Property Tax". It is officially considered a "privilege tax", meaning, you pay for the privilege of doing business within and through the County of Los Angeles. All of it is nonsense but the "through" part is particularly sickening. Even if your business is in Arizona, if you DRIVE THROUGH LA to do business you are, in theory, supposed to pay for this tax. Thankfully they can't keep track of such things yet so they are not pissing all over this country asking for money.
But wait, what is this "Business Property Tax"?
Is it a tax levied on the building you own or lease?
Nope. Not at all.
Do you own a desk? A computer? A printer? A trash can? A fax machine? Did you change the carpets at the office you rent (Did you do any tenant improvement work)? Do you have desk lamps? Chairs? Shelves?
Yes? OK, hand over the receipts to the County of Los Angeles, you have to pay TAXES on your business property.
No bullshit. Here:
http://articles.latimes.com/1997-01-21/business/fi-20589_1_p...
and here:
http://lacountypropertytax.com/portal/contactus/ppa.aspx
Even if the computer you are using is yours --not owned by the business-- you can technically be required to pay this tax on it because it is used by the business and controlled by the business to a degree.
Utopia? Well, it's very real. And it is absolutely fucking unbelievable. It isn't a lot of money, somewhere in the order of 1$ annually. But the concept that the County of Los Angeles grabs a 1% tax FOREVER on that laptop you bought for your business on an annual basis is, well, sorry, only raw sewage dumped on this page could begin to describe what I think of taxes like this one. It's theft, that's what it is.
Because the tax is small people have better things to do than to fight it. And, because a lot of voters are predisposed or easily convinced to be anti-business trying to get it repealed is likely to fail as smart politicians would quickly weaves all kinds of lies about greedy business men wanting to take food away from poor children. Theft.
And like that there are many other little needles California loves to stick into you depending on the type of business you are in. A friend of mine leases about four million dollars of manufacturing equipment.
This is why some of the comments I read on HN get me riled up at times. It is easy to tell they mostly come from twenty-somethings who have not been exposed to the real world enough to get a nice tan bordering on a burn and truly understand things.
We need to aggressively cut down on taxation and remove nearly all incentives for politicians to tax us. If we don't we end up with hundreds of little 1% taxes that, collectively, only serve to pay for their pensions and wasteful spending and do nothing, absolutely nothing, for society. Next time you get gas anywhere pay attention to how much and how many taxes and fees you are paying and then try to square that away with the condition and disrepair of our roads and bridges.
They are doing exactly what you want.
Seriously. Move if it is so bad. Otherwise, realize that paying taxes is part of the cost of doing business.
I had to reply to this one separately.
Sorry brother, this statement is ridiculous on the face of it. No state, city or town in the US is characterized by having rules allowing employees to be abused. That's just nonsense. I suggest you might want to stop exaggerating as it does little to help one take your point of view seriously. No law in the US allows employees to be abused. California isn't magical in any way in this regard. Stop spinning.
It seems to imply that - up to now - employees were sometimes required to use their own devices for _work_ and for their employer and .. had to pay that out of their own pocket.
Ignoring the bigger fear that you seem to have about California's future, how is this particular case not a direct improvement - and braindead if you think about it. I just assumed this would be the way it works ~everywhere~. Company requires you to use your car/phone/internet connection and .. needs to pay for the use of your car/phone/internet connection.
Wrapping up: Are you seriously unhappy about this particular ruling/article or is your fear a general thing and only tangentially related/merely targeted at the praising comment above you?
With regards to the phone ruling. Well, I've been paying a portion of my employee's phone bills for, well, I don't know, two decades. Didn't know we had to legislate common sense and decency.
Defamation is an injury to the reputation or character of someone resulting
from the false statements or actions of another
[...]
In order to be defamatory the statement must be, of course, false.
if Yishan lied, then yes -- there is defamation. Otherwise, it seems little different than the rest of the US.
BTW, any competent hr department, or legal, or even co-employers like many startups use , will have had you build a paper trail -- emails, notes on conversations, a pip -- to justify firing for cause.
The statement must also seem to state a fact,
or that it is based on fact, rather than an opinion,
or based only on opinion.
alias hnquote='pbpaste | fold -s -w 77 | sed "s/^/ /g" | pbcopy'
handwaving (what employers) handwaving (CA is ridiculous; no, things are ridiculous) handwaving (jobs are leaving the state) handwaving (CA is losing well-paid jobs based on absolutely no data or proof whatsoever) handwaving (because reasons... NO, BECAUSE MATH)
In actual reality, while opponents of the California's regulatory and tax regimes like to keep saying things like that, California has been adding jobs at far above the national rate. [1]
> In other words one could say that CA is gaining, not losing, jobs yet when you dig into the data you discover that jobs that pay well are leaving and the ranks are being filled by people taking pay and standard of living cuts.
Surely, if you have found that by digging into the data, you can link or cite the data and explain the methodology you used to find that.
[1] http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/california-forum/article260418...
[1] https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2014_California_Tax_Rates_and_E...
If I were running a company, I'd just give you a corporate phone that the company completely pays for. This seems like a no-brainer.
BYOD (bring your own device) always seemed like a non-starter to me. Do you really want your employer to have any access to your personal device? I sure wouldn't.
The main benifits I see are: not having to carry two phones, and having more freedom to choice what device you use.
Company lets you decide what device you want, pays the bill and - allows you to use it privately. I gave my mobile contract to my wife, only use my 'business' phone now. Private calls are explicitly allowed (most calls are free anyway, in this contract). Some common sense is required: Calling a dating line is probably stupid, talking to relatives in somewhere-over-the-sea is out as well. The only 'real' limitation I have is that I should avoid excessive texting (I .. write one sms a month, maybe, anyway. Nothing that concerns me), due to the way the contract works.
So: - device of my choosing - only one device on me - I call my friends and family using said device
Those regulations are micromanaging trivia. Is that really the proper role of government? In addition to the cost of the phones, companies have to hire additional people just to design, build and manage a "compliant reimbursement policy."
The use of "compliant" is a little misleading. This is a court ruling, not a regulation. It just says that you have to pay for your employee's expenses, which is sort of a "duh" thing to me. Companies have "compliant reimbursement policies" for travel and purchasing and client schmoozing already, and this need be no different or more complicated.
If employees have to pay for stuff you have to pay them back. That doesn't sound like over-regulation to me.
The source article is an information page from a law firm, and the reason they do this kind of information page is as a way of generating business by both (1) creating a perceived need for legal services, and (2) portraying themselves as experts in the area where they have created the perceived need.