Successor employer

Definition

The buyer who keeps the crew and the site, and inherits what the seller still owed them.

Why It Matters

California defines it and then attaches real liability. A successor is an employer using substantially the same equipment, supervisors and workforce to offer substantially the same services to substantially the same clients, and such an employer is liable for wages, damages and penalties the predecessor owed its former workforce. Sharing management or control of labor relations reaches the same result, as does employing anyone who controlled those workers' hours or pay before. A separate law then requires a successor contractor to retain the site's existing janitors for a sixty-day transition unless there is substantiated cause not to. Every janitorial employer in that state also registers annually, and contracting with an unregistered one carries its own fine.