California Workers Try to Avoid Arbitration With ‘Headless PAGA’

California employees that believe they’ve been treated unfairly by their employers are sometimes explicitly declining to bring their own cases under the state’s Private Attorneys General Act.

That technique—often known as a “headless PAGA” case—is a bid to avoid forced arbitration by skipping individual claims in favor of filing a case only on behalf of an employee group. It was bolstered by a state appeals court’s Balderas v. Fresh Start Harvesting opinion, published in April, which held that an employee who doesn’t bring an individual claim can still bring a PAGA action for herself and other employees of a company. ...