AB 636: Employers: agricultural employees: required disclosures.

Existing law requires an employer to provide an employee, at the time of hiring, a written notice including specified information in the language that the employer normally uses to communicate employment-related information to the employee. Existing law requires the Labor Commissioner to prepare a template that includes the information and to make the template available to employers in a manner as determined by the commissioner.

This bill would require an employer to include in the written notice information regarding the existence of a federal or state disaster declaration applicable to the county or counties in which the employee will be employed, as specified.

This bill would require an employer, beginning on March 15, 2024, to give an employee admitted pursuant to the federal H-2A agricultural visa, on the day that the H-2A employee begins work for the employer in the state or on the first day that the employee begins work for another H-2A employer, additional information in a separate and distinct section of the notice described above, in Spanish, and, if requested by the employee, in English, describing an agricultural employees additional rights and protection under California law, as specified. The bill would provide employers who employ both H-2A and non-H-2A employees with the option to provide the notice to non-H-2A employees in English or Spanish, at the employees request, or in the language that the employer normally uses to communicate employment-related information to non-H-2A employees. The bill would require the Labor Commissioner to create a template for the notice that complies with this requirement and to post the template on its internet website commencing March 1, 2024.

Existing law specifies that for purposes of these provisions, the term employee does not include, among other persons, an employee who is covered by a valid collective bargaining agreement if the agreement expressly provides for the wages, hours of work, and working conditions of the employee, and if the agreement provides premium wage rates for all overtime hours worked and a regular hourly rate wage.

This bill would, in addition, exclude an H-2A employee from the definition of employee if they are covered by an agreement that provides for wage rates of not less than the federal H-2A program wage required to be paid during the contract period.