According to California law, employees who expect to be able to work a given number of hours — and who fail to accrue those hours due to poor employer scheduling or inadequate notice — can be entitled to compensation.
For the full details of the law, check out the Industrial Welfare Commission Orders 1 through 16, Section V.
If you’re too busy to do so, here’s an executive summary:
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For every day that you had to go to work — but your employer failed to give you work or gave you less than 50% of the work you expected — you must be compensated for half of what you should have been paid that day. There is a limit, though. You can’t be paid for fewer than two hours. And you can’t be paid for more than four hours prorated from your typical pay rate. If you had a double shift on the day that your employer mis-scheduled you, and your second shift was disrupted due to the scheduling problem, your employer only owes you for two hours of work based on your regular pay rate.
The reporting time pay compensation is bounded by a lot of different caveats. You will not be owed reporting time pay, if:
- Your employer had to shut down operations due to a public safety threat or a government order;
- You were not fit to work;
- You got fired or expelled from work for disciplinary reasons;
- Something like an earthquake shook the building and your boss had to send everyone home — happens not infrequently here in Northern California!
- Some strange occurrence prevented your employer from conducting business and he or she tried, within reason, to connect with employees and tell them what’s going on.
If you really dig deep into the California reporting time pay laws, you can find exceptions and then exceptions to those exceptions and so on and so forth. Rather than try to parse these rules yourself, connect with the experienced employment lawyers at Vega Law for a free and confidential consultation. Call us now at 415-287-6200 or visit us online at www.vegalawyer.com.