Come Discuss Overtime Class Action Lawsuits in California

California is on Your Side When You Are a Victim of Illegal Wage Practices
An advantage of being represented by the California employment law lawyers of Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik is that employees don't have to go into wage and hour lawsuits by themselves; instead, they are in the action with the state of California as their partner.

In 2004, the legislature enacted the Private Attorney General Act, also known as the "PAGA." The PAGA is enables private attorneys, such as our San Diego based employment law firm, to add another cause of action for civil penalties to complaints for overtime wages, meal and rest break violations, business expenses reimbursement, among other wage and hour violations. Although the state of California gets seventy five percent of the money obtained under this cause of action and the employee gets the remaining twenty five percent, it is important to understand that the PAGA is a completely separate, additional cause of action. In other words, it does not preclude the employee from fully recovering his or her overtime wages plus interest and any other penalties that may be available for the particular violation at issue, such as so called "waiting time penalties" available for each day up to thirty days that an employee is not fully paid his or her full wages upon employment termination.

Wage and Hour Class Actions 
Another advantage of the PAGA relates to overtime class action lawsuits in California. Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik has already demonstrated its excellence in these types of wage and hour actions throughout California, including in San Diego County, Santa Clara County, Los Angeles County, and San Francisco County. The PAGA only furthers the possibility of achieving successful results on behalf of employees because the California Supreme Court decided in Arias v. Superior Court (2009) that PAGA claims are representative actions that are not subject to pass through California's class action gauntlet. This gives employees leverage with their other claims under the substantive provisions of the California Labor Code for, say, overtime wages, meal and rest breaks, and improper wage deductions and calculations.    

Requirements for Using the Private Attorney General Act of 2004
The main requirement under the PAGA is that employees in California are required to file an action with the state for the wage and hour violations before he or she files a private action in court. Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik focuses on maximizing the recovery for employees that are victims of their employer's illegal wage practices. California benefits in that the PAGA provides a realistic way for the state to collect penalties for wage and hour violations, which hurt the state because less money paid to employees means less taxes for California.

Call 866-745-2949 in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orange County or San Diego
For additional information about our approach to unfair pay practices anywhere in the state, contact the California employee compensation attorneys at Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik for a free consultation.

Come Learn About Federal Employment Laws and Regulations

Employees May be Entitled to Recover 2x Their Unpaid Overtime Wages
If your current or former employer acted in violation of federal overtime laws, you may be entitled to recover two times the unpaid overtime wages. When employees are improperly denied overtime wages, they are first entitled to recover those unpaid overtime wages plus interest. There is also a penalty under federal law which creates a right for employees to recover liquidated damages in certain circumstances, like when the employer intentionally commits the overtime wage violations. At Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik, our California employment law lawyers strive to collect all of the wages and penalties available to employees. Our Settlements and Judgments demonstrate the level of success we have had recovering wages for employees throughout California communities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County and San Francisco.

Performing Job Duties Before and After Shifts 
Employers frequently require employees to perform job duties before they clock in and after they clock out of the timekeeping system. These activities may consist of anything from driving to work to spending time making sure the alarm system is active before you leave the store. If your current or former employer knows or should know that you are performing job duties “off the clock” and the duties you are performing are principal job activities, you may be entitled to recover compensation under federal law for the amount of time you spend performing such duties before and after shifts.

Mandatory Meal Period 
Under federal wage and hour laws, non-exempt employees are suppose to receive a 30 minute, uninterrupted and off-duty meal break for every 5 hours of work. If your employer interrupts these mandatory meal periods or fails to provide the meal periods all together, but does not compensate you for working through such meal periods, you may be entitled to recover compensation.

Compensable Waiting and On-Call Time 
Employees are entitled to compensation for “waiting time” and “on-call time” unless they are off-duty and completely relieved of their job responsibilities. Generally speaking, the test that is applied is whether the worker may use the waiting or on-call time effectively for his or her own purposes. If he or she cannot, the time is usually compensable. Regardless of whether you are in the Northern District of California or the Southern District of California, an experienced employment law attorney at Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik can give you a free consultation on your federal wage and hour rights.

California Technician Labor Rights

Under the relevant California labor laws and the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, most technicians and technologists - such as engineers and workers in the avionics, veterinary and ultrasound industries – are entitled to receive overtime pay for working more than 8 hour workdays or more than 40 hour workweeks. At Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik, our California employment law attorneys focus on helping technicians, technologists and other workers whose education finished after college in lawsuits to recover overtime wages and penalties.
California labor laws require employers to pay all technicians and technologists overtime wages at one and a half times the employee’s regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 8 hours in a workday, 40 hours in a workweek or the first 8 hours of a seventh consecutive workday. There are certain exceptions to California overtime laws and regulations. In the case of technicians and technologists, employers often rely on the professional exemption to avoid the obligation of paying for overtime labor. Instead of paying these techs overtime pay as required by California and federal wage-and-hour regulations, employers often illegally pay them a fixed salary without additional pay for working overtime hours. Technologists and technicians are also regularly cheated out of meal breaks and rest periods.

As a general rule, in order to meet the labor law test of a learned professional employee who is not entitled to overtime pay, technologists and technicians must: Make at least $455 per week; primarily perform job duties that require advanced intellectual knowledge in a recognized field of science or learning; and consistently exercise independent discretion and judgment. The ‘advanced knowledge’ requirement of the learned professional exemption refers to knowledge that technicians and technologists acquire through a long period of concentrated training and instruction. Technicians and technologists who become highly-skilled by working, rather than by receiving formal instruction, are usually entitled to be paid overtime wages.

When we investigate whether or not they are entitled to overtime pay under California employment regulations and the federal Fair Standards Labor Act, our overtime law attorneys often discover that technicians and technologists are being cheated out of their full wages and benefits they are entitled to make. Although employer’s throughout California- from the Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area- label technicians and technologists exempt from overtime pay, these workers do not meet the requirements of the learned professional overtime exception because the actual job duties they perform do not require a specialized academic degree that is a standard prerequisite for entrance into the profession.

If you are a technologist or a technician whose schooling ended upon graduating from a university and you are not paid overtime wages, contact one of our experienced labor law attorneys today to see if you have a valid claim to collect unpaid wages and penalties under the labor law. We represent technologists and technicians throughout California, from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area, in lawsuits to collect:

• Unpaid overtime wages and penalties on behalf of salaried technicians and technologists 
• Meal break and rest period compensation and penalties
• Reimbursement for work-related expenses such as mandatory training
• Compensation for the time spent on-call or standing-by under the employer’s control 
• Penalties for failing to pay hourly technicians for work performed off-the-clock 
• Damages for Wrongful Terminations and Demotions
• Penalties for harassing and discriminating against technologists and technicians

Our employment law attorneys work with technologists and technicians throughout the state, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego. Contact us to see how we can help you recover damages and unpaid wages under state or federal wage-and-hour laws.

Construction Industry Labor Law Violations

Businesses involved in the construction industry regularly cheat workers out of all of the wages and benefits they are entitled to under California state labor laws and federal employment laws. Whether they are engaged in the activities of new construction or reconstruction, the repair or renovation of existing commercial or residential structures, as well as roadway and bridge construction, construction workers have labor rights and the law on their side.

Construction workers typically perform job duties such as painting, sandblasting, tuckpointing, roofing, guttering, spouting, water well drilling, installation of flooring and landscaping. Employers in California often times attempt to cheat these construction workers out of their wages and benefits in the following manners:

·         Failing to record all hours actually worked to include time spent working before or after the shift

·         Shorting hours by using terms such as down time or rain delay

·         Failing to compensate for meal breaks where the employee is not completely relieved of all duties to enjoy uninterrupted time for the meal

·          Banking of overtime hours or payment of overtime in the form of "comp time".

·         Failing to combine the hours worked for overtime purposes by an employee in more than one job classification for the same employer within the same workweek.

·         Failing to segregate and pay overtime hours on a workweek basis when employees are paid on a bi-weekly or semi-monthly basis.

·          Failing to pay for travel from shop to work-site and back.

At Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik, our experienced California employment law attorneys represent construction workers who have been wrongfully terminated. We also focus on helping construction workers who are victims of illegal employer practices such as retaliation, discrimination or harassment. Some employer conduct violates the state’s labor laws and employee rights. We can help you fight back, put a stop to your employers illegal activity, and help you get paid in the process.

Construction Worker Labor Law Violations? Call 866-745-2949 for Legal Advice

We are the employment law lawyers of Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik. Our labor law attorneys focus on representing construction workers throughout the entire state of California in cases of illegal employer practices such as unpaid wages, wrongful termination and retaliation. Our experienced worker rights lawyers have the resources and experience to represent construction workers throughout the entire state of California, including communities such as Los Angeles, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley.

Call Center Customer Service Employees

A call center is a central customer service operation where agents (often called customer care specialists or customer service representatives) handle telephone calls for their company or on behalf of a client. Clients may include mail-order catalog houses, telemarketing companies, computer product help desks, banks, financial services and insurance groups, transportation and freight handling firms, hotels, and information technology (IT) companies. Call centers are subject to California state and federal labor laws.

Under federal and state employment laws, companies are required to keep records of the wages and hours that call center employees work. Our employment law lawyers often find that call center customer service employees do not receive the accurate itemized wage statements clearly revealing all of the information that is required by California labor laws and regulations.

One major problem with respect to the wage and hour rights of call center workers is that employers fail to pay them for all hours worked. Hours worked includes all time a call center employee must be on duty, or on the employer's premises or at any other prescribed place of work, from the beginning of the first principal activity of the workday to the end of the last principal activity of the workday. This includes the time call center workers spending booting up and shutting down their computers pre-shift and post-shift.

An example of common violations of state labor laws committed against call center workers and other customer service representatives occurs when employees working in call centers spend time starting computers before shifts to download work instructions, computer applications, and work-related emails.

Another major problem in the call center industry is that many companies pay customer service workers a salary without additional overtime pay for working more than eight hours in a workday or forty hours in a workweek. A salary, by itself, does not exempt employees from the minimum wage or from overtime. Whether employees are exempt from minimum wage and/or overtime depends on their job duties and responsibilities as well as the salary paid. Sometimes, in call centers, salaried employees do not meet all the requirements specified by the regulations to be considered as exempt.

At Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik, our California employment law lawyers represent customer representative workers in cases of violations of state labor laws, including wrongful termination, discrimination and harassment. Customer service representatives serve as a direct point of contact for customers and are responsible for ensuring that the company's customers receive an adequate level of service or help with their questions and concerns. These employees interact with customers to provide information in response to inquiries about products or services and to handle and resolve complaints.

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA): Federal and State Laws

Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA):

Under the Family and Medical Leave Act, employees are allowed 12 weeks each year to care for the serious health condition of an employee,, their spouse, child, regardless of whether or not the child is natural or adopted, or other family member.

Under the California Family Rights Act, domestic partners are allowed to take the 12 weeks each year to attend to each others medical issues. California state labor laws allow employees to now receive partial wage replacement up to 6 weeks of leave.

Under California Labor Code Section 233, sick leave is not mandated. In fact, sick leave is similar to vacation time and holiday pay laws in that it is something that an employer may choose, at its discretion, to give its employees. However, if employers in California offer employees a sick leave policy, the employee must be given the option of using it as family leave.

Common Labor Law Violations Committed Against Computer Professionals

Although information and technology systems at first galvanized California’s workforce by creating many more jobs, it soon became apparent that the state’s computer revolution not only led to many more employment opportunities, but also to many more opportunities for employers to violate the state’s labor laws.  Nowadays, it has become a standard business practice in California for computer companies to commit illegal labor practices against computer systems analysts, computer programmers, software engineers and other similarly skilled workers in the computer field.

The employment law lawyers of Blumenthal, Nordrehaug & Bhowmik are known throughout the state of California- from Los Angeles to San Jose, Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area - for obtaining large settlements and judgments on behalf of computer employees. We primarily concentrate on helping employees in the computer industry collect:

·        Unpaid overtime wages and salaries

·        Wages and penalties for misclassifying skilled workers as exempt from overtime pay

·        Unpaid vacation time

·        Out-of-pocket work expenses such as equipment, tools, software, hardware, seminars, computer classes, licenses, training and other certifications 

·        Compensation for time spent “on-call” or standby time

·        Compensation for time spent working off-the-clock booting up and shutting down computers or working from home

Our employment law attorneys also focus on helping employees in actions to recover penalties for illegal employer activity. Employees working in computer and technology position can rely on us in cases of wrongful termination, harassment, discrimination and retaliation.

In order to pay computer employees a fixed salary and no overtime wages, it is the technology company’s burden to prove that the worker is exempt based on his or her job duties. To satisfy the computer exemption test, you must be a computer systems analyst, computer programmer, software engineer or other highly skilled employee. In addition, you must be a paid a guaranteed, high minimum salary each week.  Computer workers that manufacture, install, repair, maintain, troubleshoot or perform other repetitive tasks are entitled to premium overtime wages. Whether or not the employee is capable of high-skilled work, has a fancy job title or makes a salary is irrelevant. All that matters is what he or she is actually doing.