A common assumption among employers running salaried teams: paying well above the state minimum wage means exempt classifications are safe by a comfortable margin. That margin shrinks every year California’s minimum wage rises, and it is about to shrink again….
A common assumption among small business owners: if a worker signs an independent contractor agreement and sets their own hours, the classification is settled. Recent litigation involving spa and salon workers at a hospitality business shows how that assumption fails…
You earn a flat production bonus, say two hundred dollars for hitting a monthly output target, on top of your regular hourly pay. The bonus shows up on your check, but your overtime rate for that pay period looks the…
You clock out for a meal break, but your employer asks you to drive from one job site to another during that same window. By the time you park and actually sit down to eat, fifteen or twenty minutes of…
A lot of California employers assume that once an employee is working temporarily outside the state, California wage law stops applying to that stretch of work. That assumption is often wrong, and it can be expensive. In Sullivan v. Oracle…
You heard tips and overtime are tax-free now, and you started planning around a bigger paycheck. Not so fast. A lot of California workers are making that same assumption, and it only tells half the story. A new federal tax…
A client told me what her manager said the third time she worked through lunch that week: “Nobody’s forcing you to skip lunch. That’s on you.” Wrong. That single sentence is doing a lot of work, and almost none of…
Your last paycheck did not show up when you expected it to. This catches a lot of people leaving a California job, and there is a clear, specific rule for exactly when that check is due, not just a vague…
Employers often assume that if the paycheck clears and the hourly rate is legal, the wage and hour side of the business is fine. That assumption misses most of where California claims actually come from. Misclassification is the first trap. …
Plenty of owners assume that once someone is called a “manager,” the overtime question is settled. It isn’t. Lab. Code § 510 and California’s wage orders look at what the role actually does — the amount of independent judgment exercised,…
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