California Wage Lawyer

The term wage lawyer, wage and hour lawyer, wage compensation lawyer, and upaid wage lawyer have many meanings. All employment law cases, including those for job terminations, have a lost wage and benefit component. In addition to recovering lost wages in cases of wrongful termination or a discriminatory job termination, our California wage lawyers also obtain monetary settlements and verdicts for employees who have experienced California Labor Code violations. These California Labor Code Violations may be for legally required minimum wage, meal breaks, overtime, prevailing wage, or rest breaks.

This article explains what types of unpaid wages our California Labor Lawyers can obtain for employees. Because unpaid wage law is broken up between wages simply not paid and wages due to illegal job terminations this article is divided into those two categories.

CALL (818) 783-7300 to speak to a California Unpaid Wage Lawyer for a private consultation

CALIFORNIA LABOR CODE VIOLATIONS

Both the California Labor Code and the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) provide employee rights to certain wages, penalties, interest, and often the requirement the employer pay the employee’s attorney fees and costs associated with an action for unpaid wages. In the California Labor Code and the FLSA there are important distinctions about exempt and non-exempt employees.

The regulation of the hours worked, overtime pay, and meal breaks applies to non-exempt employees. Exempt employees do not have the same rights under the FLSA and California Labor Code. Determinations about who is exempt and non-exempt are complex. Merely because an employee has a supervisory title they are not necessarily exempt. Nor are all white collar positions. You will have to consult with one of our wage and hour lawyers to determine if we think you fall into the exempt versus nonexempt category. There are far too many examples and exceptions for this article to cover them.

The categories of California wage and hour cases are as follows:

• BREACHES OF CONTRACTS REGULATING EMPLOYEE BONUSES, COMMISSIONS, SEVERANCE PAY, AND STOCK OPTIONS. Depending on the lega violation damages in addition to the specified contract damages may be available, and so might penalties


• DOUBLE TIME PAY for hours worked in excess of 12 in a day, and also for nonexempt employees who have worked more than four consecutive weeks without a day off


• MEAL BREAK VIOLATIONS when nonexempt employees are prevented from taking uninterrupted half hour meal breaks, or their employer does not make the taking of these meal breaks realistic


• MINIMUM WAGE VIOLATIONS can occur not only because an employee is not paid minimum wage, but can also occur if an employee is not paid for all of the hours worked and their pay dips below minimum wage on an hourly basis


• MISCLASSIFICATION of exempt or nonexempt status, or independent contractor


• OFF THE CLOCK WORK occurs when nonexempt employees are not paid for all of the hours they work


• OVERTIME PAY for all work over eight in a day or forty in a week for nonexempt workers


• PAYSTUB VIOLATIONS occur when the paystub fails to indicate the correct number of hours worked, any number of hours worked, the rate of pay, the name of the employer, and other things enumerated in the California Labor Code


• PREVAILING WAGE PAY is pay construction workers on Prevailing Wage Public Works Contracts must be paid.



Click Here for firm head, Karl Gerber's expansive continuing legal education article on prevailing wages



• REST BREAKS are owed to nonexempt employees. These rest breaks must be for tenminutes or more without interruption Our unpaid wage lawyers have handled all sorts of cases for unpaid wages including controlled standby, tip pooling, unreimbursed expenses, and wage theft. Call (818) 783-7300 to speak to a California unpaid wage lawyer

Examples Of Our Wage & Hour Case Results:

• $775,000 for small class action of employees not allowed meal breaks or cell phone reimbursements while caring for dependent adults
• $750,000 Sub-Minimum wage class action settlement
• $800,000 for mis-classified independent contractors
• $450,000 paystub violations
• $350,000 for controlled standby and overtime for one employee
• $360,000 for missed meal and rest breaks, and overtime for 3 employees, and PAGA penalties for less than 25
• $875,000 for 4 oil field service industry workers whose times worked were not recorded on timesheets and were on-call
• $350,000 nurse mis-classified as independent contractor who was on-call
• $350,000 for directional driller whose fixed rate bonuses were not calculated into his overtime rate
• $350,000 for prevailing wage and paystub itemizations
• $350,000 for 2 employees in the vacation rental business who worked off-the-clock, on-call & PAGA
• $305,000 for 2 IT trouble shooters oncall at a major hospital
• $260,000 for controlled stand by pay
• $125,000 for employee who quit after being misclassified and not receiving overtime.
• $175,000 PAGA settlement resort staff who worked off-the-clock’
• $174,250 missed meal and rest breaks
• $175,000 Minor issues of pregnancy discrimination in fast food restaurant, lack of rest breaks
• $175,000 Failure to pay minimum wage & overtime of 3 strip club workers
• $125,000 non-payment of wages to CEO
• $180,000 Controlled standby pay claims of oil field service employee
• $1,150,000 in a Northern California failure to pay commissions case
• $515,000 for unpaid overtime and misclassified independent contractors
• Arbitration award of more than $200,000 for wage & hour violations in construction
• $175,000 for unpaid minimum wage in El Monte
• $175,000 for controlled standby in the limousine industry
• $99,500 in overtime for a North Hollywood car wash worker

Recover Wage Loss For Unlawful Job Terminations

Our California job termination lawyers have recovered more than $100,000,000 in wages for employees who were unjustly fired. These wages include past lost wages, future lost wages, benefit loss such as health insurance, 401k, and more. Although lost wages are a big part of wrongful termination and job losses due to discrimination, in those lawsuits employees can also recover damages for emotional distress and possibly punitive damages.

To read more about workplace discrimination click here Workplace Discrimination

For information on Wrongful Termination click here Wrongful Termination Articles

The Employment Lawyers Group represents employees throughout California. We have six offices in Southern California, an office in Bakersfield, Oxnard, and three offices in Northern California. All of our employee lawsuits are taken on a contingency which means you only pay legal fees out of money we are able to obtain from your employer. All of our law firm attorneys are long term employees only handling employment law.