Episode 196: Ellen Savage Reflects on 30-Year Career as Labor Law Expert

Welcome to the Workplace, a podcast by Cal Chamber. I'm Matthew Roberts, Associate General Counsel for Labor and Employment with the California Chamber of Commerce. Hello everybody. Today's episode, for me at least, is going to be a little bit bittersweet today as we say goodbye to a frequent guest and one of my very esteemed colleagues, Ellen Savage. Frequent listeners of this show will know Ellen is one of my favorite guests to chat with, not only because of her brilliant storytelling about employment law issues, but because, like all of us, I know I'm going to learn something incredibly useful when she speaks. Ellen, unfortunately for us, but awesome for her, will be retiring from the California Chamber of Commerce. And although I am so very happy for where her adventures take her next, I am also sad for what we will miss. So, Ellen, for the last time, thank you for joining us today.

Thanks, Matt. I'm excited to talk to you today. And I'm sad a bit myself to be leaving a great career at the Chamber.

Yeah, I thought this was a great opportunity to kind of express our gratitude for your service to the Chamber. But more importantly, to really sum up many of the most valuable and memorable lessons that you've gathered over your career. You've had a very lengthy career, you've experienced. You're really, in my mind, a person who has generally seen it all. Although I know emails that we still kick back and forth today know that that's not the case. You can never really see it all, but I know you've seen a lot and there's a lot of knowledge base that we're going to be missing when you leave. So speaking of that knowledge base and where it all came from, Ellen, why don't you share your career background for everyone as kind of how you grew into this role over your career?

Sure. Just real quick, Reader's Digest version. I went to law school at night while I worked for the Chambers Legislative department and then I moved on over to the helpline when it was a brand new service for our members. There were like three of us at the time. I was lucky enough to travel all over doing seminars for the Cal chamber and for EDD's Employer Advisory Councils. In fact, I just talked to someone last week who laughingly remembered that I did a seminar when I was eight months pregnant with my oldest daughter who is now almost 30, for one of their EAC groups many moons ago. For a lot of years I wrote and updated the Big Fat California Libre Law Digest. And then when I realized our members weren't able to find all of those many forms and things they need for hiring and firing. I wrote the California Hiring and Termination Guide, and a lot of those forms and checklists are still on our HR California website. Of course. Matt, I've been lucky enough to be a guest several times on your stellar podcast.

Finishing up On a personal note, my husband Drew and I actually met here at the Cal Chamber 35 years ago. And between the two of us, we've got like 65 years of service here. I'm one of those really lucky people who loves my job. Our members are wonderful. I love being able to help them solve everyday problems, give them resources they can actually use. It's a job where every day is different.

Well, except when the California Legislature creates or updates the mandatory sick leave law, then every day is Groundhog Day.

Ellen, you just triggered our collective PTSD's about this year's paid sick leave expansion. I know I wasn't with the chamber back in 2014 when the law first went into effect, but I can tell you this year was a real treat in helping members get through that new expansion and reinforcing what they learned. I do think, though, now finally here in the month of May, we are finally getting that issue under control. And no small part to your work on the helpline. Speaking of the helpline, Ellen, why don't you share your most memorable call that you've taken over the years? I know you've taken many, all the way back to when it was just you and a couple other employees doing this. What stuck out in your mind over all these years?

Gosh, so many. I think the most memorable of all was an HR director. She worked for a fairly small company and she called. Not an unusual sounding call. She had a bunch of questions about pregnancy, disability leave, how long someone could take off and whether the employer had to keep the insurance and all the forms and all that. Everything seemed totally normal. But then she kept putting me on hold and coming back to the call. And I know a lot of these small HR directors are juggling a lot of things and they get interrupted a lot, but finally after like three or four times, she filled me in. So this woman is actually in the hospital in active labor trying to find out about her own right to take pregnancy disability leave. She literally put me on hold every two minutes going, hold on having another contraction. So that, I have to say, was a call I will never forget. Yeah, I was hoping she'd name the baby after me. I don't know, probably didn't.

What an unbelievable call. And I actually will tell you that we're Sharing personal stories about our careers and things. The reason I love being in employment law, really, is that humanity that underpins everything. It's kind of exemplified in that call. These are real life things that real life people are going through, and that's kind of what's deriving the basis for these laws. And you go to law school and you learn all the very serious stuff about statutes and court decisions, and you read about and hear about these massive jury verdicts and all the very serious. But what's really driving all of this stuff is that we're really making rules around human behavior in this weird, unique place, the workplace. It's very different than just being out in the public. Ellen, I think this is a really great opportunity to run through several questions you remember over the years that remind us all of the humanity of employment law and that we're really all just trying to do the best for each other inside this crazy world of the workplace.

Well, yeah, the workplace can be a crazy place. Over the years, I've gotten several people asking me what to do when an employee keeps showing up with big old hickeys on their neck. Those little love bruises.

Yeah, I was gonna say, Ellen, I think. I'm not sure if we're at that stage where we have to explain what a hickey is, because I don't see that term used around very often. So maybe in a safe for work way, explain what those might be.

They're, you know, teenagers making out, sucking on each other's necks. Does that work?

That's great. All right, so what do we do? Yeah, what do we do, Ellen?

You know, that one's actually pretty straightforward. You tell them it's not okay to come to work that way, and they need to cover it up. And, yeah, I don't care if it's 100 degrees out. Go put on a scarf or a turtleneck. Hickeys are not legally protected, period. That one's pretty straightforward. Another one that is actually a little trickier is people will call me and say, hey, I just hired, let's say, this new receptionist, and she looked totally normal. And then three days later, she showed up to work, and her hair has dyed like, six different colors. She looks like. I don't know, she looks like an Easter egg. What do I do?

And, you know, my daughter Matt, she dyes her hair this crazy purple once in a while. So I get it. But in this case, it kind of depends on the workplace. Like, what kind of workplace is it? Are we talking about, you know, someone who works in a warehouse where no one sees you? Or is this, you know, like your receptionist at a fancy financial planning firm, in which case, you know, set your expectations on business dress and grooming. As an employer, you've got a right to set those. And if more natural hair shades are sort of an expectation in that sort of environment, you can ask your employees to stick to those. I think one of the things that's changed in the long time I've been here is that there's a relatively new law that says California does protect hairstyles that are connected to race or culture, like dreadlocks. So we do need to keep that in mind. What else? Oh, somebody was trying to steal the goldfish from the office fish tank. I can't remember. Maybe they weren't goldfish. Maybe they were like expensive fish and that's why they were worried. I don't know. But the employer wanted to set up a secret camera to see who was stealing these fish. And, you know, secret cameras, those are pretty much a no, no in the workplace. We've got that pesky California constitution, and it says we have a right to privacy and an expectation of privacy. So, yeah, you can set up a camera to see who's stealing the fish, but you gotta let people know it's there. Put a policy in your handbook, Put up signs that say, smile, you're on camera, and maybe, I don't know, lock up the fish tank. But no secret cameras.

So that actually raises something really interesting for me. Before we go on with this is oftentimes, Ellen, you and I will talk to members and we'll be asked to be put to our proof. Right, Ellen, send me the statute that says this. Ellen, is there a statute out there that says employers can restrict their employees from stealing goldfish from the office tank?

No, but don't say that too loud. The legislature might hear you make one.

But what I think this highlights really then is like this common sense approach. Right, Ellen? Like trying to fit things into the humanity of what we're dealing with here. So you talk about setting up a secret camera. There's some rules generally around that. Right. But employers are free in a setting to set some reasonable rules around things like stealing goldfish or take it further, stealing cash from the register, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes we get. Employers who do set up secret cameras got a call not too long ago from someone who did set up a camera secretly and found out that one of the stockroom guys had been.

All right, I'm not sure how I'm going to say this. Frequently engaging in the Stock room where he thought he was on his own in some very non work related activities that he should not have been doing at work. And he was caught on camera. So the employer wanted to know, can I fire him? Really here there's two things we need to talk about. One, what this employee was engaging in is not legally protected activities. So discipline or termination could certainly be warranted. But because there's a secret camera, I had to tell him, hey, before you do that, your next call is to your lawyer, Right.

And you know what's really interesting about that in that case is this is an employer, you know, I would imagine that a secret camera, the stock rooms, they're designed to what, prevent theft? Ellen, you think something reasonable around that. And so employers want to do again, what they think are common sense, reasonable things. But sometimes, like we said with the goldfish, there are no laws around stealing goldfish as a protected activity or whatever. But sometimes there are. And I think your last point, I think you should reiterate it, is what you should do in this case after we've talked with you, is go speak with legal counsel. Because the next question I think you're going to talk about really speaks to an issue where employers should make sure that they have consultants, experts, somebody that they can lean on to navigate this crazy world of employment law, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah. If the thing you're planning to do doesn't pass what we call the sniff test, in other words, you're concerned it might not be okay, at least give us a call and talk about it. And then certainly your attorney, like we had an employer who called us wanting to put an electric code pad where you type in, you know, your code into a lock on the employee bathroom. You had to type your code in. He was already doing this, actually. Had to type your code to get in, you had to type your code to get out. And this guy was timing how long each person was in the bathroom. So everybody had their own code. So if Susie was taking too long to fix her hair or whatever, he would dock their pay. And this one just bothers me in so many ways. Matt, I'm going to say don't time your employees in the bathroom. Yeah, sometimes certain employees need longer in the bathroom, maybe due to a disability. And we're going to handle those situations under the disability accommodation laws on a case by case basis. So, you know, employers really need to stop and think about is what I'm doing legal? And is what I'm doing going to get my employees to pick up the phone and call their brother in law, the lawyer, and say, hey, this is terrible, I want to sue this guy.

So, yeah, yeah, you know, that question for me seems like an outlier, right, Ellen? And you've been doing this, of course, a lot longer than I have. I think a lot of the questions that we get, and you can really speak better to this, are people in positions where they're charged with just help managing the workplace. Right? You're human resources professionals, your office managers, you're C suite executives, you're the business owner of a business with seven employees. And I get the sense, and like I said, you can speak more on this, that employers far and away like 99, 999 out of a million times are trying to do right by their employees 100%.

Matt, I don't even know how many employers I've talked to over all of these years. Hundreds of thousands. And really almost every single one of the people I talk to, they want to do what's best for their employees. They want to help their employees when they're going through tough times. They want to loan their employees money when they need it or front them insurance coverage payments when they go on leave and they can't afford to make those payments. And these employers, despite the fact that I them the risks, they're willing to take those risks that they're never going to get repaid, which just always impresses me so much. They really want to help their employees. They, they want to give them time off to bond with their new baby, even if they're not legally entitled to it. I just, I just love that most of the folks we talk to really are trying to bend over backwards to create a good workplace.

Yeah, what I mean, I totally agree with that. That's really been my experience over these last several years as well. What has really struck me about employment law and you know, why Enjoy it and I'm a total nerd about it, like, you know, I believe you are as well.

Is this rapid evolution of what's been going on over the last several years. So I started in this field about 13 years ago. The workplace has drastically changed since I started. Ellen, can you kind of share what the workplace looked like way back when you started and you know, what we have now, that wasn't even a thought back then.

So you're asking me, Matt, when I rode my dinosaur to work, what the workplace was like? I think.

No, Ellen, I want to know what it was like when you walked uphill eight both ways in the snow with no shoes to get to work and I get to take some fancy vehicles to work.

You know, top of mind, I would say. And we just talked about this a minute ago, There was no mandatory sick leave. And a lot of employers offered it, but a lot of them didn't. So if your kid got sick even for a couple of days, you could lose your job. And I know sick leave is a hassle for a lot of employers, but.

Some mandatory sick leave has protected jobs for some employees and I guess that's been a good thing. Some other things that jumped to mind, there were no automatic meal period penalties, which employers grapple with a lot. So if an employer employee was denied a meal break, that had to go file a claim with the labor commissioner. There wasn't just that automatic penalty.

I would say way back when, sexual harassment was kind of accepted as normal. The conversations, the words, the jokes, the posters in the workplace, sadly, that was just all. You just kind of had to accept it. There was no sexual harassment training along those lines. Businesses could tell women they had to wear dresses or skirts. We called them no pants policies. And I knew a woman way back in the 90s when we rode our dinosaurs. She had a really nice fancy. It was kind of the hip thing at the time, a business suit kind of outfit, but it had culotte pants. It looked like a skirt, but there was like the fabric dividing the skirts was kind of like a pants thing. She got sent home to change because it violated the no pants policy. So, you know, we're kind of in a different world from that now. Smoking. Oh my gosh, smoke. There was no smoke free workplace law. And the person at the desk next to you would smoke all day long. And just the way it was, there were no local ordinances. Now there's what probably close to 100 San Francisco has, I think I counted the other day, like 15 or something, local ordinances. So there's a lot more for HR people to keep up with now, especially with so many remote employees that are working all over the state, all over the country, all over the world. It's very different. You're right.

Yeah. And I think that really highlights why employers should grasp onto someone with an expertise like you there on the helpline to at least just to navigate. Right. Like, we've never been able to give specific legal advice on the helpline, but we've walked you right up to that line. And we oftentimes will save calls to legal counsel because we can navigate through what, as you've highlighted is just a much different employment landscape than it was 30 years ago. And we're finally here at this last question for you, Ellen, on the podcast to kind of dovetail into what you just talked about. I am brand new in this field and I walk into your office for guidance. I'm a brand new human resources professional. I'm a brand new office manager who has been asked to wear several hats and one of them is human resources in quotes. And I walk into your office for guidance today. What are the biggest lessons and takeaways you can give me? And really everyone else out there listening to Survive and thrive, Managing the workplace.

Well, I'm going to give you two first, treat your employees with respect, which as I said, most employers are at least trying to do. But don't nickel and dime them or it's going to end up backfiring. One guy I talked to years ago, his employee quit without notice and this guy literally wanted to subtract from the employee's final paycheck that he was getting ready to drop in the mail. He wanted to deduct the cost of the stinking stamp to mail the paycheck. So what, like 45 cents at the time maybe. And that 45 cent deduction could end up costing him 30 extra days of wages and waiting time penalties. And because he wasn't going to be paying all the final wages, right, he was subtracting that sinking 45 cents and all kinds of other stuff like maybe, oh, attorney's fees. Do you know what an attorney costs right now? So compared to the postage stamp? Anyhow, treat your employees with respect. And sometimes you're going to overpay a little bit, but it's going to save you in the end. I think the second thing is keep up with changes in the law. And I know human resources a huge, huge job. Use the Chambers HR California website. Call my fantastic colleagues on the helpline. Sign up for the Chambers HR Watchdog blog.

I am not being paid a dime to say this, but honestly, I think the Chamber is an amazing resource. It's affordable. I would advise a new HR person join the Chamber. Use all the resources. Call the helpline so you don't blow it and you don't miss the newest, craziest California law. And you're not the one that's the next big test case in front of the California Supreme Court. Yeah, that's what I'd say.

Well, Ellen, thank you so much for being here today and all of the previous days of the last few decades. Of course, we will all surely miss you very much. But we are all so happy for the new adventures on your horizon.

Thanks Matt. I've had a great run here. I'm going to miss the Chamber. I'm going to miss all the great people on the helpline. Thanks for for taking the time to talk to me today.

And thank you listeners for joining this discussion on the workplace. Please comment, share and subscribe to Cal Chamber's podcast by visiting calchamber. Com.