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June 28, 2001
Calif.'s Top Labor Lawyer Demoted
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But it got worse.
His boss, Labor Commissioner Arthur S. Lujan, rescinded the opinion late last week.
And now, according to the Sacramento Bee, Lujan has demoted Locker.
The Bee reports that Locker is expected to step down from his job as chief counsel of the labor standards division July 15. In that job, he supervised about 50 lawyers and legal secretaries statewide, oversaw some 2,000 cases a year, and served as the primary adviser to the labor commissioner.
Locker was offered reinstatement to his former civil service job as an industrial relations counsel - a lower-level attorney's job that involves no management duties. But it remained unclear at mid-week what Locker's new responsibilities will be.
Locker's pay, meanwhile, will be slashed in two stages, sources told the Bee. On July 16, the chief counsel's salary is scheduled to drop 5 percent. Another cut of $156 a month will kick in 90 days later on Oct. 14.
Reached Tuesday, Locker would not comment on his demotion and new assignment.
The demotion stems from a letter he sent in May to Los Angeles attorney Richard J. Simmons. California employers, he wrote, cannot force salaried exempt workers - typically those in executive, professional and administrative jobs paid once a month --to take vacations when it's convenient for the company and deduct their pay accordingly.
Locker also explained in the letter that if employers indeed deduct, say, a week's pay from those workers' salaries for a temporary shutdown, then the affected workers would lose their exempt status. That, in turn, would obligate employers to give those employees overtime pay for the remainder of the month if they work more than eight hours in a day or 40 hours in a week.
The letter from Locker was an interpretation of one piece of AB 60, the controversial law that last year brought back California's daily overtime rule.
Locker's letter was published on the DIR's Web site, just as many firms were preparing to close during the first week of July because Independence Day falls on a Wednesday this year.
A flurry of opposition, mostly from employers, followed.
To view the Sacramento Bee story, click here.