Doug Cornelius on compliance for private equity real estate
Littler mendelson, P.C. put together a White Paper on California’s Mandatory Training Law for Sexual Harrassment.
The purpose of this white paper is to provide analysis and practical information to employers as they re-train their supervisors in the 2007 training year pursuant to California’s mandatory training law.
The authors of the White Paper are David Goldman, Tara Bedeau and Christopher Cobey.
California Assembly Bill 1825 codified in California Government Code section 12950.1 requires that employers train supervisors on sexual harassment every two years if the company has 50 or more employees.
But does that mean more than 50 employees in California or more than 50 employees in total?
The Sexual Harassment Training and Education Regulations Section 7288.0 (a)(5) provides:
“Having 50 or more employees” means employing or engaging fifty or more employees or contractors for each working day in any twenty consecutive weeks in the current calendar year or preceding calendar year. There is no requirement that the 50 employees or contractors work at the same location or all work or reside in California.
On April 23, 2007, the Fair Employment and Housing Commission Adopted its March 27, 2007 Sexual Harassment Training and Education Regulations With No Further Changes. I previously posted about the enactment of the statue: Sexual Harassment Training in California.
California Assembly Bill 1825 codified in California Government Code section 12950.1 requires that employers train supervisors on sexual harassment every two years.
AB 1825 applies only to entities that regularly employ 50 or more employees or regularly receive the services of 50 or more persons pursuant to a contract. Presumably the “receiving services” language is an attempt to avoid deciding if a worker is an employee or independent contractor. Although not specified by the statute, courts have held that Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA)’s other minimum employee requirements count only employees working in California.
The law imposes an initial and continual training requirement on covered employers. Covered employers must provide sexual harassment training and education to each supervisory employee once every two years, and to each new supervisory employee within six months of their assumption of a supervisory position.
While AB 1825 does not define “supervisor,” presumably, the definition contained in the FEHA will apply. A “supervisor” is any individual having the authority “to hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees, or the responsibility to direct them, or to adjust their grievances, or effectively to recommend that action . . . if the exercise of that authority is not of a merely routine or clerical nature, but requires the use of independent judgment.” (Government Code § 12926(r).)
The training must be conducted via “classroom or other effective interactive training” and include the following topics:
One of the reasons for moving from knowledge management to compliance was the overlap in concepts and some issues. Sumner Blount summarized a lunch talk from Scott Mitchell of OCEG discussing the need for a unified approach to managing risk and compliance:
1. The high cost of information silos – siloed approaches to risk and compliance result in redundant activities and high total compliance costs.
2. The high costs of poor information quality – the lack of a “single source of truth” for risk and compliance information can reduce the effectiveness and quality of decision-making.
3. The high costs of getting it wrong – an ineffective risk and compliance program can, and does, result in loss of corporate reputation, increased business interruption, and reduced employee productivity.
Any of that sound familiar?
From More Thoughts on the OCEG Session at CA World
Originally posted on KM Space.
In February 2007 the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association asked Sir David Walker to undertake an independent review of the adequacy of disclosure and transparency in private equity with a view to recommending a set of guidelines for conformity by the industry on a voluntary basis. This review culminated in November 2007 with the publication of the Guidelines for Disclosure and Transparency in Private Equity (.pdf).
The Guidelines require additional disclosure and communication by private equity firms and their portfolio companies where such portfolio companies had more than 1,000 UK employees, generate more than 50% of their revenues in the UK and either had an enterprise value of more than £500 million when acquired by one or more private equity firms or, in the case of a public to private transaction, had a market capitalisation together with premium for acquisition of control of more than £300 million.
A white paper written by Joe Laferrera of Gesmer Updegrove LLP New Data Security Regulations Have Sweeping Implications For Massachusetts Businesses (.pdf) provides a great analysis of the new Massachusetts Data Privacy Regulations, their impact and how to deal with them.
These are my prior posts on the new Massachusetts Data Privacy Regulations:
Thanks to Lee Gesmer of MassLawBlog.com for pointing out the article.
Mark A. Srere and Amy J. Conway-Hatcher of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP wrote Legal Expenses for The Recorder (CAL LAW). The article compares the results of U.S. Department of Justice and SEC investigation against Lucent with FCPA Opinion Procedure Release 08-03.
Lucent spent millions of dollars on hundreds of trips for Chinese government officials over a three year period. The trips were primarily sightseeing and leisure activities, including Disneyland, Niagra Falls and the Grand Canyon. Lucent also labeled the attendees as “decision-makers” who could help award new business to the company. See The FCPA Blog’s post on Lucent.
TRACE International under FCPA Opinion Procedure Release 08-03 was merely paying out of pocket costs for journalists to cover the company’s news stories. Local journalists got lunch money and local transportation costs. Out-of-town journalists got some extra travel expenses and more meals.
TRACE tied the payments to expenses directly related to the “promotion, demonstration or explanation of the company’s products or services” and were reasonable in amount. Lucent failed both of these tests under 15 U.S.C. § 78dd-2(c)(2)(A).
Lim Lay Ying wrote an article that popped up in iStockAnalyst: There’s Money in Going Green. The article traces the savings some companies it found in reto-fitting real estate properties to be more energy efficient.
“With existing buildings representing the largest portion of any city’s building stock – a situation that will continue to be long into the future – retrofitting them to meet sustainable standards and to revitalise the communities around them, promises to be the wave of the future for the real estate industry.”
The Support Anti-terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act of 2002 (SAFETY Act) provides some legal liability protections for providers of Qualified Anti-Terrorism Technologies – whether they are products or services. The goal of the SAFETY Act is to encourage the development and deployment of new and innovative anti-terrorism products and services by providing liability protections.
You can read the text of the SAFETY Act and the final rule for the SAFETY Act.
The Department of Homeland Security has a website dedicated to the SAFETY Act.
The SAFETY Act provides some liability protection to the “Seller” of the “Qualified Anti-Terrorism Technology.”
