California overtime law is notorious for confusing employers and their workers. California laws are complex and have many exceptions to their rules. Also, keeping up with all of the changes happening within the law can be exhausting for anyone short of having a law degree. Take the State’s policy which expands on the Fair Labor Standards Act overtime pay rules for example:
California daily overtime laws mandated for some time that employers are to pay qualified employees overtime at 1.5 times their regular rate of pay for any hours worked over an 8 hour day or a 40 hour workweek. (California is only 1 of 4 states where daily overtime is ever required) The daily overtime law was instated on January 1, 2001. But before that, there were no daily overtime requirements.
The current daily overtime calculations have an exception when it comes to alternative workweeks. If you are in a good faith agreement with your employer in which you work an alternative workweek of 10 hours per day/ 4 days a week, then daily overtime is paid for hours worked over 10 hours after a 40-hour workweek. If you work over 12 hours in a day, or over 8 hours on the 7th consecutive day in a week, then you would receive double pay. All of this is contingent upon whether or not you are exempt from receiving overtime. Confused yet? Good overtime lawyers are a necessity in California!
California also has many guidelines which help determine the exemption status of employees. These complicated variations of FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) exemption guidelines are confusing employers, causing a huge amount of inaccurate job classifications, which are leading to an increase in overtime lawsuits.
If you are unsure of where you stand as an employee or employer in the state of California, contact an overtime lawyer like Michael D. Lore who knows the complexities of California overtime law.
