The title of her presentation was HR Best Practices and Legal Requirements for California Employers. Attorney Linda Artiano got everyone’s attention.
“You’re not too small a business for the government to care about you,” she opened her presentation. Then sequed into AB5 which takes effect January 1, 2020. The substance of AB5 is that “every worker for every 
company has to be an employee, not a contractor.” Unions pushed AB5 through the California legislature because they wanted part-time workers for Uber and Lyft to be full-time employees not contractors.“And don’t think employees can skip their lunch break because the employee wants to,” she added. “Employees must begin their meal break of at least 30 minutes starting before they complete 5 hours of work,” she said. “And don’t think that because your worker wants to be paid in cash, and there aren’t any records like time sheets, that you can’t get caught.”
There were more questions for the floor than any we’ve ever had. No wonder, Artiano cited an example of a company with two employees that had to pay backpay because the employer could not document 30-minute launch breaker for the employees.