Farmworker Testimony Helps Pass Anti-Retaliation Bill

The new law prohibits an employer from calling or threatening to call immigration authorities because an employee has exercised his or her employment rights.  Photo by David Bacon

The new law prohibits an employer from calling or threatening to call immigration authorities because an employee has exercised his or her employment rights.  Photo by David Bacon.

October 7, 2013 - Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 666 into law.  SB666 is Senator Darrell Steinberg’s bill protecting immigrant workers from employer retaliation.  Senator Steinberg requested extensive information from CRLA about immigrant workers to help with the bill and CRLA staff and clients testified on the bill on several occasions in Sacramento over the summer.  Click Here to Read the Background Story. The new law prohibits an employer from calling or threatening to call immigration authorities because an employee has exercised his or her employment rights.  CRLA’s background information and client testimony were critical to educating the lawmakers.  Sen. Steinberg quotes CRLA Directing Attorney Michael Marsh’s hearing testimony in his press release announcing the legislation. Click here to read press release.

The new law also contains a seemingly benign, but extremely important, provision stating that employees do not have to exhaust administrative remedies under the Labor Code unless a statute specifically requires exhaustion.  Opposing counsel have increasingly tried to get courts to toss out lawsuits because supposed administrative remedies were not exhausted.  The new law makes clear that employees do not have to take many of their claims to over-worked and under-resourced state agencies before they can go to court, thereby offering a swifter path to justice for farmworkers and other low-wage workers.

The new law prohibits an employer from calling or threatening to call immigration authorities because an employee has exercised his or her employment rights.  Photo by David Bacon


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