Maybe you’re a California government employee who’s on the verge of foreclosure, and you and your spouse are desperately crunching your budget numbers to see whether you’re “missing” any income. Or maybe you’re an abused or harassed employee, and you have the strong intuition that your employer has been violating California’s work and hour laws – perhaps in a major way.
In any event, you need a solid, understandable guide to California’s overtime laws. In middle of 2000, CA enacted new regulations for overtime. These regulations obviously are quite complicated. But the take away – the “elevator pitch” summary, if you will – is as follows:
- If you are an hourly worker, and you work more than eight hours in one work day, you must be paid overtime if you go over that eight hour allotment.
- Hourly workers who work over 12 hours in a single day should be paid double overtime.
- If you are an hourly worker who works for seven days in a row, your employer needs to pay you overtime for that seventh day and pay double overtime after you have been working eight hours.
Employers who skirt these regulations can be penalized in various ways. The California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) assesses the punishments. On the “slap on the wrist” end, an employer may have to pay $50 per every worker who was not paid correctly per CA laws. A single employee complaint can trigger the DLSE to dig up and rummage through the employer’s records. And employers guilty of egregious violations can face an unpleasant buffet of penalties and future restrictions.
Not all workers are eligible for overtime. As we discussed above, this blog post is not meant to be legal advice – it’s a simple quick summary of the “need to know” points.
Employees who work under a collective bargaining agreement (an agreement that pre-specifies how overtime pay works) as well as employees who use an “alternative work week schedule” have different wage and hour situations.
To make sense of your options – and to punish an employer for a possible work and hour violation – connect with the team at the Law Offices of Daniel Vega.
Toll Free: 866-471-6847
Local: 415-287-6200
Find out more about us at www.vegalawyer.com.