Wage & Hour

It should be well understood that an employee, including an executive, deprived of compensation promised by the employer and earned by the employee has a potential cause of action for breach of contract. But did you know that such an employee may also have a wage payment claim under applicable labor laws, particularly the California Labor Code? The consequences are…

The federal overtime law, called the Fair Labor Standards Act, exempts employers from paying overtime wages to workers who are classified as “executive,” “administrative” or “professional” employees.  These exemptions are colloquially called “white collar” exemptions. State overtime laws often have similar “white collar” exemptions. Applying these exemptions is far more nuanced than their moniker suggests. There are complex, multi-pronged legal tests…

Imagine the following:  You show up to work at your employer’s.  They require you to enter on the...

California’s Private Attorney General Act of 2004 (“PAGA”) has provided employees injured by their employer’s Labor Code violations with an opportunity to seek statutory penalties on behalf of him or herself and on behalf of other aggrieved employees.  This law famously allows an individual employee to stand in the shoes of the government agency that enforces the Labor Code and assert the…

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) generally requires that employers pay employees at least $7.25 per hour. One of the few exceptions to the rule is “tipped employees” – including waiters, bartenders, and other employees who regularly receive gratuities for performing their jobs. The FLSA allows employers to subsidize the minimum wage paid to the tipped employees with gratuities…