Cashiers and Tellers Stand Up for a Seat

In California a 1913 regulatory order requires employers to provide a chair when “the nature of the work reasonably permits the use of seats.” After a six-year legal battle, the state’s highest court is considering whether that means Bank of America, CVS Health, JPMorgan Chase, and others must provide seats for tellers and cashiers. A loss for the companies would mean tens of millions of dollars in penalties, as well as the costs associated with changing their seating arrangements. “It would simply not work in the real world, as applied to real jobs,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a friend-of-the-court filing.

The seating suits are part of a legal phenomenon made possible by California’s Private Attorneys General Act of 2004. PAGA gives employees the right to step into the shoes of the state labor commissioner and sue over alleged labor violations, including conditions for which there’s no remedy under existing law. Unique in the U.S., the state law was intended to guarantee workers’ rights where the state lacked resources to enforce the law.