Defendant was a signatory as an employer to a collective bargaining agreement with the union which supplied lighting technicians for the TV commercials that defendant produced or that were produced by non-signatory production companies that rented defendant's services and its signatory status to hire the technicians. This decision reverses a summary judgment in defendant's favor on wage claims by technicians… Read More
Applying Singapore law in accordance with a stock purchase agreement's choice of law clause, this decision holds that the employer did not breach that agreement when it bought back the employee's stock after having fired him. The agreement provided for an employer buy back at market value of the stock if the employee left employment voluntarily or involuntarily for any… Read More
The trial court erred in compelling arbitration of plaintiff's individual wage and hour claims while retaining jurisdiction over his PAGA claims. The employer's arbitration clause contained a waiver of "representative" claims--a word broad enough to encompass PAGA claims. Since PAGA claims cannot be waived, the purported waiver was invalid. But the arbitration clause also said that the waiver provision was… Read More
Though not called "ministers" and though lacking as rigorous a religious education, teachers at a Catholic or other religious school, whose duties include educating students in the tenets of their religious faith fall within the "ministerial exception," based on the First Amendment, which prevents courts from adjudicating wrongful termination or employment discrimination claims brought by employees of religious institutions whose… Read More
Summary judgment was properly entered for the employer in this wage and hour case. The employer's expert showed that the employer's time rounding of clock in and out times to the nearest 15 minutes was facially neutral and neutral in practice as well. Also, the employer disproved the employee's claim that he was denied meal and rest breaks. Each weekly… Read More
Labor Code 226 applies to wage statements provided by an employer if the employee’s principal place of work is in California. This test is satisfied if the employee works a majority of the time in California or, for interstate transportation workers whose work is not primarily performed in any single state, if the worker has his or her base of… Read More
An employer must provide wage statements complying with Labor Code section 226 when an employee’s principal place of work is in California, which ordinarily means the employee works a majority of the time in California. For interstate transportation workers and others who do not spend a majority of their working time in any one state, this test is satisfied when… Read More
State law limits on wage borrowing permit compensation schemes that promise to compensate all hours worked at a level at or above the minimum wage, even if particular components of those schemes fail to attribute to each and every compensable hour a specific amount equal to or greater than the minimum wage. The no-borrowing principle--that an employer cannot "borrow" compensation… Read More
Defendant required its service technicians to drive their personal vehicles to their first off-site service call of the day and from the last service call of the day. Plaintiff claimed that defendant was required to pay the technicians minimum wages for the time so spent and to reimburse them for the expense of driving to and from the first and… Read More
Under Wage Order 16, an employer must pay a worker at least the minimum wage for mandated travel time between the place where the employer first exerts control over the employee and the place where the employee performs work. Here, the employee was entitled to minimum wage for all time spent from the check in point, waiting for and then… Read More
Labor Code sections 558 and 1197.1, allow the Labor Commissioner to sue for set civil penalties in addition to an amount sufficient to recover underpaid wages if an employer fails to pay overtime wages or minimum wages as required by California law. This decision holds that in a PAGA suit, the employee plaintiff may recover only the set civil penalty… Read More
Summary judgment was improper where questions of fact remained as to whether the plaintiff was a domestic work employee of defendant caregiver placement agency for purposes of the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights, Lab. Code 1450 et seq., rather than an independent contractor as the defendant claimed. Read More
After employee provided uncontradicted evidence that he worked overtime hours he could not be denied compensation merely because his employer failed to keep accurate time records of the employee's hours of work; rather, at that point the employee's memory of time spent on special projects sufficed, and the burden shifted to the employer to disprove the claimed hours. Read More
Union members need not arbitrate state statutory claims unless their collective bargaining agreement clearly and unmistakably consigns the claims to arbitration, expressly mentioning the statute or the rights it confers. Read More
Despite good faith efforts to comply, defendant employer’s time records and payroll records showed that 75% of the workers who worked between five and five and a quarter hours were not given meal breaks or missed meal break pay, so trial court correctly entered judgment finding employer liable for penalties. Read More
Although she taught a standard half-hour religion course each day, a fifth-grade teacher at a Catholic school was not a “minister” and so could sue the school for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by firing her after it learned she was diagnosed with cancer. Read More
Trial court properly declined to certify a class in putative wage and hour class action brought by property inspectors because even though common questions predominated, the plaintiffs' proposed trial plan of proving liability by means of an expert's testimony based on a double-blind survey he conducted of a random sample of class members was unmanageable, inadequate, and unfair. Read More
A court's interest in regulating its workforce to ensure that the judicial process appears impartial to all appearing before it justifies the court's rule banning employees from advocacy activity, such as wearing clothing or adornments with writings or images advocating a cause. Read More
An employer may legally round the actual clock in and out times for workers to the nearest 10th or 4th of an hour so long as the rounding doesn't overall disadvantage workers, and this is true for meal and rest breaks as well as the work day as a whole. Read More
The Industrial Welfare Commission may exempt health care workers from the Labor Code provision allowing a waiver of second meal breaks only for shifts of 12 hours or less. Read More
