AB 800 – Requires Schools To Give Notice Of Basic Labor Rights When Signing Student Work Permits

Beginning August 1, 2024, Assembly Bill 800 (AB 800) requires a private school signing a minor student’s Statement of Intent to Employ a Minor and Request for a Work Permit-Certificate of Age to provide the student, either before or at the time of signing, a document clearly explaining basic labor rights extended to workers.  The topics covered by the labor rights document, must include, without limitation:

• Prohibitions against misclassification of employees as independent contractors.
• Child labor.
• Wage and hour protections.
• Worker safety.
• Workers’ compensation.
• Unemployment insurance.
• Paid Sick Leave, Paid Family Leave, State Disability Insurance, and the California Family Rights Act.
• The right to organize a union in the workplace.
• Prohibitions against retaliation by employers when workers exercise these or any other rights guaranteed by law.

AB 800 encourages the University of California Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education to produce, with input from bona fide labor organizations, a draft template for the document to be provided to minors, including translations into other languages, such as Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Korean.

The document must set forth the above labor rights in plain, natural terminology easily understood by the student.  The document must be in English and include a website address and a QR code that links to an internet website with electronic versions of the document, and any translated versions of the document, produced by the University of California Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

(AB 800 adds Section 49110.5 to the Education Code.)