Califonia Overtime Laws
- California's overtime laws are strictly enforced and are considered employee-friendly among the states. The California overtime regulation sets out the definition of a workday and workweek needed to determine if overtime pay is required. The regulation also specifies the penalties for violations of the law and your rights if you feel you were unfairly denied overtime. Collective bargaining agreements and exempt employees are not covered by the law.
- In California, as of 2010, a workday is defined as eight hours and a workweek is defined as 40 hours. If you are a non-exempt employee, and therefore are entitled to overtime under this law, you must be paid time-and-one-half of your pay for every hour over eight in a 40 hour week.
An alternative workweek is described as an agreement between an employer and her employees that they will work no longer than 10 hours a day in the 40 hour week. Under this type of agreement, which must be agreed upon by a secret ballot voted upon by at least two-thirds of the employees in a "readily identifiable unit," according to the California labor code, employees are not paid overtime for work over eight hours in a 40 hour week, but are paid overtime for hours worked over their agreed upon workday. - If you are on a regular eight-hour-day, 40-hour-weekwork schedule, hours worked over 40 are deemed eligible for overtime. However, you must work 40 hours in the week, excluding sick, personal and vacation days. For example, if you work 30 hours and then work nine hours in one day, you are not entitled to overtime pay for that day because you didn't work 40 hours in the week. If you worked three days at eight hours, then took a vacation day and worked the fifth day for 10 hours, you would not be entitled to overtime because you didn't actually work all 40 hours in that week.
On an alternative work schedule, if you work over eight hours but less than 12 hours, any time you worked over the agreed upon workday hours must be paid at time-and-one-half over 40 hours. If you work more than 12 hours in a day and over 40 in a week, you must be paid double-time for any hours in excess of 12 in a day. For example, if your regular work day is 10-hour shifts, and you work three 10-hour days but on the fourth day you work 13 hours, for that day you would get straight time for the first 10 hours, time-and-one-half for the next two and then double-time for the last hour.
If you work seven straight days in a workweek, you are paid time-and-one-half for the first eight hours and double-time for any hour after that. - Any employer who violates a provision of this regulation is deemed by the California Labor Code to be guilty of a misdemeanor. For an initial violation of the law, an employer is charged $50 for each employee who was denied the proper pay, in addition to an amount sufficient to recover the owed wages. Subsequent violations are subject to a $100 fine per employee. The unpaid wages recovered are paid to the employee.
