AB 1506 affects one of California strangest and most peculiar laws – the Private Attorney General Act, or PAGA. AB 1506 became effective on the date that Governor Jerry Brown signed the bill into law, which was October 2, 2015.
PAGA was enacted in 2004 as a way to make enforcement of existing labor code violations in California easier, given the limited resources of the Labor and Workforce Development Agency. In California, an employee can challenge any labor code violations as an individual matter, covering only the harm suffered either by the employee, or as a collective matter under PAGA on behalf of all employees who suffered identical labor violations by the same employer. If the claim is initiated under PAGA, the penalties are distributed 75% to the state and 25% to the employees.
AB 1506 is a pro-employer law, which gives the employer a limited opportunity to correct certain wage statement violations before a PAGA claim can be submitted on wage statement violations. California requires up to nine items to appear on a wage statement, and employees can bring either individual or PAGA claims if their wage statements do not comply with the law. AB 1506 allows an employer to correct the dates of the pay period and the address of the employer, and prevent a costly PAGA claim based on those two errors.
AB 1506 is only limited to corrections of these two areas, and the employer can only use this provision once for the same violation within a 12-month period.