Home>Levelset Community>Legal Help>Is my company essential?

Is my company essential?

My Alameda county company does window covering sales and is opening, stating as they have a contractors license it is construction. Is this essential? Would office employees have to go into the office or do they legally be allowed to work remotely? I live in San Joaquin county and believe the SIP states you can only travel to essential work.

1 reply

May 8, 2020

San Juaqin hasn't lifted its shelter in place order yet, but it looks like discussions about relaxing restrictions are beginning. So, in order to continue work there, the work must generally be considered "essential" under the state's stay home order. But again - discussions on re-opening have begun in San Juaqin, at least to some degree. Meaning, this information may be outdated in just a few short days. With that being said, California has been pretty lenient about letting construction continue. To quote the CA guidance on essential business: "Construction Workers who support the construction, operation, inspection, and maintenance of construction sites and construction projects (including housing construction)" can continue work. The term "construction" can be extremely broad - but, the supplying and installing of windows would seemingly fall into that category - particularly when supplying to other essential businesses, and especially if the work done requires a contractors license. As for the office employees - if the office can comply with social distancing measures, then presumably they'd be able to work in the office since their work is necessary to support the carrying-on of the essential business. But, it'd be much safer to have those employees work remotely, and that should probably be done, if possible. That way, there's little question that the employer did its part to comply which would limit the exposure to potential liability. Finally, for help tracking where work is closed or can continue, this tracker from Levelset should be useful: Can I do Construction Work In my State?

0 people found this helpful

Helpful