Walk into any lunchroom and it’s hard to ignore the walls plastered with labor rules and regulations. Turns out, there’s a good reason for that. A new report on state labor law by XpertHR, a New Providence, N.J.-based human resources consultancy, found that California has among the most complicated workplace regulations in the country. The Golden State has 17 separate orders regarding minimum wage, time off for voting, pregnancy leaves, whistleblower protection and other rules. Combine that with local regulations and some businesses might end up with 36 posters. By contrast, New York has 18; Idaho and Delaware require only one. For example, Delaware’s single poster requires notifications on minimum wage requirements, child labor rules, breaks and discrimination law. In California, not every single rule has to be on a separate poster; some can be combined with others and some are only recommended, not mandatory. Bottom line, it can be confusing for a business, especially since they are often labor law changes every year. All this could be academic if it weren’t for the cost – the average price of a poster is $24.99 – and the fact that failure to display information about state and federal employment laws can result in fines of up to $17,000. “It’s usually smaller companies that don’t know they’re supposed to do that,” said Daan Renssen, owner of Thousand Oaks consultancy PrideStaff. “Bigger companies always do it.” And unlike other areas of the workplace where digital has taken over, paper still rules with labor laws. A simple email to employees about law changes is not allowed. As a result, some employers simply don’t post the required signs. “Sometimes people don’t know about it, and sometimes they just don’t want to pay for the posters,” Renssen said. – Olga Grigoryants
