Three things happened over the summer that a California employer of 25 to 500 people should have on a list somewhere. One is a number, one is a case, and one is a regulation still being written. The number is the easiest and the case is the most useful.
January’s wage floors, announced in August
The Department of Finance certified the inflation adjustment on July 31, and the Department of Industrial Relations announced the result on August 13. The California minimum wage rises to $17.40 an hour on January 1, 2027, from $16.90.
The consequence that costs money is the one downstream of it. The salary floor for the executive, administrative and professional exemptions is twice the state minimum wage for full-time work, so it rises to $72,384 a year. Every exempt employee below that figure on January 1 is misclassified from that morning, whatever their title and whatever their duties.
You have been given four months of notice on a decision that most employers make in the last week of December. That is the whole point of this section. A reclassification is a compensation decision, a morale decision and a scheduling decision before it is a payroll decision, and none of those are improved by being made on the twenty-eighth.
Run the exempt population against $72,384 now. For anyone below it, you have two options and they are not equivalent. Raising the salary keeps the classification and costs the difference. Reclassifying to non-exempt costs overtime you have never measured, brings meal and rest premium exposure you have never tracked, and requires a conversation with someone who will hear it as a demotion. Decide which, in September, with the numbers in front of you.
Local rates moved on July 1 as usual, and several are now well above the state figure: Emeryville at $20.34, Berkeley and San Francisco at $19.61, Pasadena at $18.57, Milpitas at $18.50, Los Angeles County at $18.47, Santa Monica at $18.47, Los Angeles City at $18.42, Fremont at $18.05, Malibu at $17.91, Alameda at $17.76. Note the reversal this year: the county rate now exceeds the city rate in Los Angeles, which catches employers who have been treating the two as interchangeable.
The remote worker case, and why it cuts both ways
On July 30 the First District Court of Appeal decided Saberin v. Alation, Inc. The employee worked remotely from Utah for a California-headquartered company and sued under Labor Code section 432.7, the statute restricting an employer’s use of arrest records. The court held that California’s employment statutes do not automatically follow a company’s headquarters to wherever its remote workers happen to sit.
What controls is not where the company is incorporated, and not where the employee logs in. It is where the decision-makers were when the employment decision was made. In that case the decision-makers were in Illinois, and the California statute did not reach the claim.
Employers will read that as good news, and for a genuinely distributed company it is. But read the other direction before you rely on it. If your out-of-state employee is managed from Oakland, if the termination decision is made by someone sitting in San Jose, if California-based HR runs the process, then California law comes with those people. The case does not create a safe harbor for having your headquarters here. It creates a test that turns on facts you can influence, and mostly have not thought about.
The practical consequence is a question worth answering in writing for every out-of-state employee you have: who actually decides, and where are they. Most organizations of this size cannot answer it, because the answer has drifted since 2020.
The workplace violence standard is being written now
Since July 2024 the workplace violence prevention requirement has lived in Labor Code section 6401.9, a statute. Cal/OSHA is converting it into a regulation, and the Division released a revised discussion draft on July 22 with comments closing yesterday, August 17.
This is still pre-rulemaking. There is no formal notice, no Standards Board hearing yet, and nothing here is binding. It is worth reading anyway, because the statute obliges the Board to adopt a standard by the end of 2026, and the draft shows where the obligation is heading. Several additions go well beyond what the statute requires today:
- Engineering and work practice controls would become mandatory where feasible, with an illustrative list running from alarms and video monitoring to deep service counters and bullet-resistant glass. The statute requires a plan; the draft would require physical measures.
- Individual trauma counseling would have to be offered or made available to affected employees. An employee assistance program or a workers’ compensation route would satisfy it, but you would need to know which one you are relying on.
- Anonymous reports would have to be accepted and answered, and reports would have to be receivable by someone other than the employee’s direct supervisor where that supervisor is involved in the incident or has failed to deal with the hazard.
- A fifth five-year record category would be added: reports of threats and concerns, including anonymous ones, together with your evaluation of each and what you did about it.
- The small-employer exemption would narrow. Today it turns on fewer than ten employees present at any given time. The draft would require fewer than ten at all times over the preceding year, and would exclude security services, janitorial services and domestic workers from the exemption entirely.
Nothing on that list requires action today. All of it is worth knowing before you renew a lease, specify a reception desk, or renegotiate an employee assistance program contract in the next six months.
Two smaller items
The Labor Commissioner has published the employee rights videos contemplated by SB 294, in English and Spanish and in both worker and employer versions, on the Department of Industrial Relations website. There is no obligation attached to them. You are not required to show them, distribute them or post them, and any vendor telling you otherwise is selling something. You may link to them voluntarily alongside the written notice you already owe, and for a workforce that does not read a two-page notice carefully, that is not a bad idea.
Cal/OSHA also released a revised draft of the heat illness standards on August 14, with comments due September 21. If any part of your operation is outdoors, that comment window is open now.
Between now and January
- September. Run every exempt employee against $72,384 and decide, per person, raise or reclassify. Put the reasoning in writing while it is a planning decision rather than a dispute.
- September. For each out-of-state employee, record who makes the employment decisions about them and where that person sits. Then decide which state’s law you are actually operating under, rather than assuming.
- October. Check the ordinance for every city where anyone works, including anyone who moved this year and did not think to mention it.
- November. Watch for the Standards Board’s schedule on the workplace violence regulation. If it is adopted this year, the plan you wrote in 2024 will need revisiting rather than rereading.
Sources
- California Department of Industrial Relations, news release 2026-66 on the January 1, 2027 minimum wage, dir.ca.gov.
- Cal/OSHA rulemaking, workplace violence prevention in general industry, and the heat illness drafts, dir.ca.gov.
- Saberin v. Alation, Inc., No. A174549 (Cal. Ct. App., 1st Dist., Div. 5, July 30, 2026).
- Labor Code section 6401.9; Labor Code section 432.7.
This describes general California employment requirements. It is not legal advice about your organization, and it does not account for a collective bargaining agreement, an industry-specific order, or a local ordinance that may change the answer.