Articles Tagged with California wage and hour lawsuit

Workers who have been shorted wages, break time, or other benefits can pursue claims for damages in two ways: An administrative process through the California Labor Commissioner’s Office and/or with a civil lawsuit. With both avenues, there are time limits on how long workers have to file these claims. California wage theft

The deadlines are called statutes of limitations, and they apply for just about every type of case and claim under the sun. For employment wage and hour or breach of contract claims, deadlines are typically somewhere between two and four years, depending on the type of claim. There may be a few narrow exceptions that allow for more time to file, but courts are generally inclined to stick to the hard stops.

If you have a strong suspicion that you’ve been cheated out of fair pay and other compensation, it’s important to discuss your legal options with an experienced Los Angeles employment lawyer.

What is a Wage and Hour Claim?

When our legal team talks about “wage and hour” claims or lawsuits, it’s terminology that’s sort of a catch-all for many different kinds of employer misdeeds or oversights that result in employees not being properly compensated for their time and labor. California wage and hour claims can refer to:

  • Not paying workers minimum wage. (This has been an especially outsized problem for industries/companies that pay workers by-the-piece or the “piece rate” rather than an hourly wage.)
  • Not properly and fully compensating workers for overtime.
  • Denying workers the meal and rest breaks to which they are entitled.
  • Failure to reimburse workers for business expenses (gas/mileage, office supplies, work tools/materials, etc.).
  • Not properly maintaining worker pay records.
  • Bouncing worker paychecks.
  • Failure to pay workers their last paycheck.
  • Unauthorized deductions, including skimming workers’ tips.
  • Requiring workers to engage in work-related tasks without pay. This includes being on-call (call back or standby), off-the-clock bag checks every shift, refusing to pay workers for “unproductive time” (time spent at work/under the control of the employer, though not actively engaged in production work), and encouraging employees to work off-the-clock.
  • Not providing hazard pay, when it’s provided as part of the employment agreement.

Most of these rights are limited to workers properly classified as “employees” as opposed to “independent contractors.” Knowing that employees have far more rights under the law than independent contractors, some employers intentionally misclassify employees as independent contractors. This allows them to avoid paying for things like minimum wage, sick leave, workers’ compensation, meal breaks, etc. Workers can successfully challenge a misclassification as an independent contractor in court by establishing the level of control the operation had over the worker’s day-to-day tasks, how closely related the worker’s contributions were to the employer’s core mission, and how the worker was paid.

Workers who are properly classified as independent contractors can still pursue wage theft claims, though they typically do so by alleging breach of contract or unfair competition rather than labor law violations.

California Employment Law Statute of Limitations

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Fitness equipment and media company Peloton is accused of wage and hour violations in a California employment lawsuit, a proposed class action that was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court and which the company is trying to have removed to federal court.

The complaint was filed shortly after the 1st of the year and alleges Peloton violated numerous elements of the California Labor Code due to failure to pay fair wages and issuing inaccurate wage statements. Peloton employment lawsuit

As our Los Angeles employment attorneys understand it, the plaintiff was a hourly, non-exempt sales associate for about 6 years. He alleges the company denied him fair wages and other benefits during those six years.

More specifically, the nine-count complaint alleges: Continue Reading ›

A class action lawsuit on behalf of college football players alleges violations of minimum wage laws. Filed by a former university player who went on to play for the NFL and now the CFL, accuses the NCAA and many Division I schools of refusing to pay student athletes as they should.minimum wage law violation

The action – the latest in a string of wage and hour lawsuits against the NCAA by its athletes – follows a recent decision by the league to allow players to profit from their own name, likeness and image, the plaintiff says, isn’t enough. That decision came shortly after California passed a law allowing college athletes to sign endorsement deals. That could end up being a huge break for amateur players, but the reality is, those kind of offers are only going to be available to a select few players. Other students employed by the universities or the NCAA are paid – those who sell the popcorn, those who tear the tickets – why not the players on the field? For most of the players, these games aren’t hobbies – they’re the start of a career. Both training and games are taken on at no small physical risk and personal sacrifice.

The primary plaintiff in the case, who played for the school between 2013 and 2016, asserts that student athletes should be classified similarly to student employees, even more so than the work-study students who are hired to actually work at college games. In his statement, he insisted he wasn’t seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars for any one player, but that it seemed unfair that the NCAA – which brings in close to $1 billion annually – continues to insist the athletes be paid nothing at all. Continue Reading ›

The joint employment of a fast-food franchisor can’t be established in California employment lawsuits just because the company asserts control over the franchisee’s branding. Instead, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that plaintiffs will need to show sufficient control over things like worker hours, wages and job conditions under numerous legal theories. wage and hour lawyer

In the case before the Ninth Circuit, Salazar v. McDonald’s Corp., the court held that the McDonald’s Corporation didn’t exercise sufficient control over the workers at a Bay Area franchisee to be held as a joint employee for alleged violations of state wage laws. Continue Reading ›

According to a report last year by CareerBuilder, research conducted on behalf of the site shows 78 percent of American workers live paycheck-to-paycheck. The numberwage dispute attorneys breaks down further: 38 percent responded they sometimes live paycheck-to-paycheck, 17 percent said usually and 23 percent answered always. The overall percentage goes up for women (81 percent).

CareerBuilder’s chief human resources officer described these employee financial struggles as a problem for employers, citing that stressed out workers are less focused and less productive. Still, while a happy workforce can help financial standing long term, many employers can’t help but focus on immediate gains made by keeping wages as low as possible. Others may go as far as to dig into those already low wages even further to pad out their bottom line by making employees cover expenses related to the job.

This is what about 250,000 former and current employees of Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister, and other affiliated stores are claiming happened to them, as far back as 2009, according to a report from The Columbus Dispatch. Workers alleged they were forced to buy and wear clothing from their stores on the job, though the company denies these claims. Continue Reading ›

A popular Bay Area restaurant chain is facing down accusations of California wage violations for failure to properly pay its kitchen staff, according to media reports. The workers accuse the company, Burma Superstar, of:

  • Failing to pay minimum wage;
  • Denying workers overtime pay;
  • Refusing workers breaks;
  • Wrongly refusing workers sick leave. asianfood

The chain is famous for its tea leaf salad, which has become wildly popular in recent years. The kitchen staffers say they prided themselves on doing a good job and worked hard to make the chain successful. The fact that they were denied fair wages was an affront not just to their finances, but to the loyalty and dedication they had shown to the job.

Workers are now pursuing class action status for the lawsuit, which was filed in Alameda County Superior Court. Plaintiffs are asking for back wages, attorneys fees and other penalties. Continue Reading ›

According to a recent news article from the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, domestic workers participated in a demonstration in support of a proposition that would provided overtime for domestic workers permanently.  There is currently a law that provides for overtime pay for domestic workers, but it was a done via a piece of legislation that is set to expire at the end of 2017.

Fears-of-Min-WageWhen a new and possibly controversial bill is being proposed, it will sometimes include a date at which it is no longer in effect as part of an effort to gain more support.  This is known as a sunset provision in the law. The law that is currently in effect is known as the Senate Bill 105 (SB 105) that first went into effect in January 2014 and was set to expire in in December 2017.  Continue Reading ›

Statistically speaking, California has a larger number or low wage jobs than many other cities and states across the country. Part of this is result of the large variety of employment opportunities throughout the state, and part of it is a long history of California’s employers taking advantage of the working poor.agreement

advertisementAccording to a recent article from The Berkeley Blog, low-wage jobs may be California’s Achilles’ heel. A study referenced in the article showed that, in 2014, around one-third of all workers in the state of California earned less than $14 per hour. This equates to around 5 million workers, and most of them are adults working full-time to support their families. To make matters worse, they have an average annual income less than $16,000, and the vast majority of them does not have any health insurance, benefits, or receive overtime pay. Continue Reading ›

Two federal judges in California have ruled that it should be up to a jury to decide whether drivers for on-demand ride serves Lyft and Uber should be classified as independent contractors or employees. carsassorted

The reason it matters is because if the drivers are in fact employees, the companies have been misclassifying them, and in term denying them important employment benefits, such as workers’ compensation, unemployment, minimum wage and overtime. They also aren’t reimbursed for gas or car maintenance expenses.

Lawsuits filed against both companies in California are pursuing a request to obtain class action status.

As the U.S. Supreme Court begins another session this month following its summer recess, there are a number of pending cases that could have a significant impact on labor and employment law. uscapitol

While our Costa Mesa wage and hour lawyers want to be hopeful about the outcome of these cases, the reality is that the court did not hand out many decisions that favored workers during the last term.

The 2012-2013 term resulted six-out-of-six “wins” for employers. These decisions aided employers in a number of ways. In general, those included making it easier to win cases against them, discouraging such cases from being filed in the first place, making it tougher to obtain class action status and clearing the way for more cases to be decided via arbitration, which is generally considered more favorable to the business than the worker.

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