Salary Employee Laws Explained

In all workplaces, employees are either classified as exempt or non-exempt as it pertains to whether various wage and hour regulations apply to them. In general, exempt employees are those who primarily have management and decision-making responsibilities. Some common examples are executive, administrative, or professional employees as well as certain types of inside or outside salespeople. The misclassification of employees’ exempt status has been a fruitful source of overtime back pay awards won from litigation.

Job titles can often be misleading when categorizing different employee’s exempt statuses. For example, even though some employees may have an impressive job title (e.g. manager) a closer look at their responsibilities might reveal that they should be classified as non-exempt. State and federal law have created rules to define what exactly constitutes an exempt employee. These rules all have two requirements: a minimum salary requirement and a general description of job duties which the employee must exercise in order to be classified as exempt.

As for the salary requirement, all exempt employees must earn at least two times the state minimum wage for full-time employment. In California, this would compute to $2,773.33 per month. The duties requirement will vary depending on the type of employee. Generally, exempt employees customarily and regularly exercise discretion and independent judgment in their jobs. These judgments must be free from immediate supervision and must be of real and substantial significance to the policies or general operations of the business or its customers. It can also involve making recommendations for action to a superior authority. “Customarily and regularly” means frequently in the course of their day-to-day activities.

Starbucks Wage & Hour Class Action Lawsuit

On May 24, 2011 a Class Action Lawsuit was filed against Coffee Giant, Starbucks on behalf of Baristas employed in California over the past four years. The class action alleges that Starbucks failed to properly compensate employees for training time, including time spent "reviewing, memorizing and completing Starbucks training materials," and for completing "'written quizzes' away from Starbucks' retail store locations."

Employee Vacation Benefits

Are you curious about your rights to your vacation time? Do you feel you may have unjustly lost earned benefits? Here’s a quick blurb to answer some questions…

The rights to employee vacation are acquired as services are performed by the employee; therefore, a portion of the annual vacation is earned after each day of work. Some companies attempt to implement a "use-it-or-lose-it" policy, where employees lose earned employee vacation benefits that are not used by a specific time. Fortunately for employees, this is prohibited.

Many companies have found a legal substitute, which is a cap on the amount of employee vacation time accrued, in which vacation time in excess of the cap is eliminated. All other accumulated but unused employee vacation time must be paid out at the final rate of pay at the time of termination, even if the employee was not yet eligible to take the vacation time.

California Labor Law Regarding Meal and Rest Breaks

Here is a quick clarification of current California Meal and Rest Breaks:

According to the California Wage Orders and the Fair Labor Standards Act, employees who are classified as Nonexempt from overtime, meal and rest break requirements must be offered 10-minute paid rest breaks for every four hours they work. California labor law also says that if their shift lasts longer than 6 hours, they must also have the opportunity to take a 30-minute unpaid meal break. Under California labor law, the employer owes the employee one hour of pay if any of these breaks are not taken or the employee is unable to take a meal break. This hour of pay must be included in the following pay check.

When the employer does not comply with California labor law by restricting the opportunity for proper meal- and rest-periods, violations are calculated at one hour of additional straight time pay for each employee for each work day. California employers risk facing heavy penalties for violating California labor laws regarding meal- and rest-periods. Due to recent court decisions, the potential for large monetary fines has increased. If your employer

California Disability Rights

http://www.bamlawca.com/Wrongful-Termination-Discrimination-and-Harassment-More/Disability-Discrimination.shtml

FAIR EMPLOYMENT & HOUSING DISCRIMINATION LAWS

In order to win a discrimination lawsuit in California for failure to promote due to racial discrimination, an employee must demonstrate that: (1) the employee is a member of a protected class; (2) the employee applied for and was qualified for an open job; (3) the employee was rejected for that job; and (4) rather than filling the position the employer left it open or filled it with a worker outside the protected class at issue. An employee cannot successfully argue that he or she has a successful discrimination lawsuit based on the fact the employer lied about the reason that it actually fired the employee or failed to give the employee a raise or promotion.  Employment laws prohibit intentional discrimination committed against California employees, not lying. While evidence of the employer's lying might suggest it had cause to hide its true discriminatory reasons for why it actually decided not to hire or promote the employee, there still must be evidence supporting a rational inference that the alleged racial or age discrimination was the true cause of the employer's actions.

Disparate treatment and disparate impact discrimination claims are separate and distinct. Under California employment laws, Liability in a disparate-treatment case depends on whether the protected trait actually motivated the employer's decision to discriminate against the employee. By contrast, disparate-impact claims involve employment practices that are facially neutral in their treatment of different groups but that in fact fall more harshly on one group than another and the employer cannot justify the discrimination by business necessity. 

As with racial discrimination laws, an employee's allegations of employer retaliation under California's Fair Employment and Housing Act require that the employee prove: (1) the employee engaged in protected activity; (2) the employer subjected the employee to an adverse employment action such as demoting or firing the employee; and (3) a causal link existed between the protected activity and the employer's action exists.  In order for the employee to establish that the employer damaged the employee as a form of retaliation, the employee can show that the employer knew the employee made a complaint against the employer when the employer subjected the employee to demotion or termination.

The Truth About California Wage and Hour Class Action Lawsuit

In California, many employers violate state employment laws. However, it is difficult for employees to find employment attorneys to represent them in these cases for many different reasons. The first reason why employees have a difficult time finding an attorney when a big company commits labor law violations is that the worker does not have the money to pay an attorney. The second reason why it is hard to find a California discrimination or wrongful termination attorney is because in some discrimination claims attorneys fees can go both ways and therefore it is not economically viable for attorneys to take the claims on a contingency basis. The final reason is that the damages in wrongful termination and discrimination lawsuits are difficult to prove. Often times, the employee is already working at a new job and therefore future lost wages are unavailable for the employee. As a result of these reasons, many employers get away with labor code violations, or do they?

California has very strict wage and hour laws. Often times, employees in the state seek an attorney because they think that their workplace rights have been violated. Perhaps a discrimination or wrongful termination violation. Many times, the employee is right: the employer fired the employee for some discriminatory reason such as pregnancy discrimination or race discrimination. Although the employee has a difficult time finding an attorney for the reasons described above, the employee may not know that his or her wage and hour violations were violated.

Under California overtime laws, employers must pay employees overtime compensation for all hours worked in excess of eight hours in a single workday and under the Fair Labor Standards Act and the California Labor Code employers must pay employees overtime compensation at one and a half times the employees regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of forty 40 hours in a single workweek. Often times, employers pay employees a salary and tell the employees that because they are paid a salary, they are not entitled to be paid overtime. The employees often take the employers word for it and work a lot of overtime hours without additional compensation.

Although employees may have difficulty finding an attorney to take their case for discrimination or harassment in the workplace, the employee will likely not have time finding an attorney to take their case on a contingency fee basis under a wage and hour legal theory. If plead correctly, the wage and hour claims do not give rise to two way attorneys fees and the benefits of litigating overtime claims in California are many. Meanwhile, in the wage and hour class action lawsuit, the employees still get to litigate their discrimination and harassment claims because the employer usually takes the employee's deposition and the employee gets a chance to explain how the employer's conduct was discriminatory. Although on the complaint discrimination is not named as the cause of action, at the end of the day wage and hour overtime class action attorneys enable employees to find attorneys that will help them fight back against big companies. The lawyers front all the litigation costs and the employees never pay the overtime attorneys unless the overtime lawyers win them money.