Wage & Hour Claims

Paid for every hour. Every break. Every expense.

Most people spend the majority of their waking hours at work, so California protects that time with detailed rules that go well beyond federal law. National employers routinely miss the California-specific requirements; local employers cut corners. Either way, the money belongs to the workers who earned it.

The rules are specific

• Meal breaks: a 30-minute unpaid, uninterrupted, off-duty meal break for each five-hour period worked, for non-exempt employees (which is most hourly workers).
• Rest breaks: a paid 10-minute off-duty rest break for every four hours worked, or a major fraction of it, with the ability to leave your work location.
• Overtime: time and a half past 8 hours in a day or 40 in a week, with additional rules for a seventh consecutive workday.
• Expenses: anything you pay out of pocket to do your job must be reimbursed: mileage, uniforms and their upkeep, phones, tools, training.
• Off the clock: security checks, “just finish up” after clocking out, prep work before clocking in. The California Supreme Court has held that even a few minutes of off-the-clock work must be paid.
• Final wages: due promptly when employment ends, with penalties when they’re late.

Violations hide in plain sight

Some violations are obvious. Many are not: automatically deducting 30 minutes from every timecard whether or not a break happened, making employees combine their meal and rest breaks, not letting workers leave the worksite during breaks, “meal period waivers” that don’t meet the law’s strict requirements, and misclassifying employees as exempt or as independent contractors to sidestep all of the above.

Individual claims and class actions

Wage violations rarely happen to just one person. When a policy shorts an entire workforce, Ashley brings the claim on behalf of the class, including PAGA representative actions, and courts throughout Southern California have appointed her class counsel representing thousands of employees. Her class results include $5.0 million for rental car company employees, $1.75 million for roughly 100 workers denied breaks and full pay, and meal and rest break settlements of $1.29 million and $1.25 million, among others. Class recoveries take longer, but they are how workers make employers change.

It costs nothing to find out

Wage cases are typically handled on contingency, so the firm is not paid until you are. A single paystub tells Ashley a great deal, including who your actual employer is, which is sometimes different from the name on the door. Bring one to the consultation if you can.

Think it’s just you? Ask around quietly. If your coworkers are missing the same breaks and the same pay, the claim may be much bigger than one paycheck.