The Wage Theft Prevention Act of 2011 was signed in to law by Governor Brown in October 2011 and is effective January 1, 2012. Among other things, this new law requires employers to provide written notice to employees at the time of hiring of certain employment-related information. In accordance with the law, the Labor Commissioner has prepared a template that employers may use to comply with this new notice requirement.

Significantly, in addition to including the items of information required to be disclosed to new hires under Labor Code Section 2810.5 (a)(1), the template also includes other items of information, such as (i) the type of legal entity of the employer; (ii) whether the employer is a staffing agency; (iii) whether the employer uses any other business or entity to hire employees or administer wages or benefits; (iv) whether employment is pursuant to a written or oral agreement; (v) the employer’s workers’ compensation insurance policy number; and (vi) whether the employer is self insured for workers’ compensation and if so, the certificate number for consent to self insure. This additional information may have been included under Section 2810.5 (a)(1)(H), which provides that in addition to the specifically identified information, the notice should include “any other information the Labor Commissioner deems material and necessary.” In the absence of further clarification from the Labor Commissioner as to the reason for these additional items of information, employers should include all of the information identified on the template (and not just the information identified in Labor Code Section 2810.5 (a)(1)) in the notice to new hires.

Links to Word http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/LC_2810.5_Notice.doc and pdf http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/LC_2810.5_Notice.pdf versions of the template are available here and on the DLSE website (http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/) under the “What’s New” section.