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
Employees of a private firm who, under the firm's contract with a county sanitary district, sorted recyclables from a conveyor belt at a district-owned facility, were engaged in public work to which the prevailing wage law applied. Read More
Putative class representatives were not entitled to intervene in a parallel class action to object to settlement as they could preserve their rights by opting out or by objecting to the settlement and moving to vacate judgment approving the settlement. Read More
Since an employer must pay workers for time spent on employer-provided transportation only when the employer requires the workers to use that transportation, defendant was not required to pay its technicians for time they spent driving from home to their first appointment of the day using company vehicles, because employees could return the company vehicles at the end of each… Read More
The trial court did not abuse its discretion in awarding fees to a prevailing plaintiff in an individual FLSA retaliation claim, properly apportioning total fees among several plaintiffs, and attributing to this prevailing plaintiff only those fees reasonably incurred in prosecuting her individual claims. Read More
The arbitration clause in a law firm’s partnership agreement was unconscionable and unenforceable because it required the lawyer/partner to pay half the arbitration costs and her own attorney fees, because it restricted the arbitrators’ ability to “override” or “substitute [their] judgment” for that of the law firm’s management, and it required confidentiality about all arbitrations. Read More
Defendant’s one-year non-compete clause was illegal and unenforceable under Business & Professions Code 16600 since it sought to bar former employees from soliciting the employment of any other current employees. Read More
A PAGA pre-suit notice of a Labor Code violation need not meet pleading standards or include evidence, but it must include sufficient detail to give the employer adequate notice of the nature of the violation. Read More
The 30-day deadline for an employer to petition for administrative mandamus runs from entry of the OSHA Appeals Board’s order denying reconsideration, not from the employer’s receipt of the order. Read More
For purposes of Industrial Welfare Commission wage orders, drivers like plaintiff who rented taxicab permits from the defendant are considered employees, not independent contractors, because they are not engaged in employment independent of the defendant; rather, they cannot switch companies without obtaining a new driver’s license from the city due to municipal ordinances. Read More
Defendant’s method of compensating its technicians—by giving each technician a base salary rate that was above the minimum wage but allowed the technician to increase his hourly rate by performing more production work that customers paid for during the workweek—did not violate California’s wage and hour laws, since each technician received an above-minimum wage rate for each hour worked. Read More
Defendant’s method of compensating its technicians—by giving each technician a base salary rate that was above the minimum wage but allowed the technician to increase his hourly rate by performing more production work that customers paid for during the workweek—did not violate California’s wage and hour laws, since each technician received an above-minimum wage rate for each hour worked. Read More
A uniform policy alone does not establish the predominance of common issues if it is not a means of establishing class-wide liability; so, here, the employer could defeat class certification with evidence that many of its crews did not follow its uniform break policy. Read More
An owner and president of a restaurant corporation could be held liable for civil penalties for violating wage and hour laws since he supervised the corporation's payment practices that violated the laws. Read More
California statute extending state wage laws governing public works to cover delivery drivers of ready-mix concrete is not preempted by the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act and does not violate concrete companies’ equal protection rights. Read More
First Amendment’s ministerial exception barred seminary dean-plaintiff’s claims for defamation, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, but not breach of contract, since the latter is a matter of compliance with a faculty handbook and hence does not turn on an ecclesiastical inquiry or excessively entangle the court in religious matters. Read More
Since plaintiff restaurant workers alleged their employers took the tip credit for unrelated untipped work hours and for related untipped work exceeding 20% of their work time, they stated viable claims for violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Read More
Under the 2008 amendment to the Americans with Disabilities Act, it is no longer necessary for an employee to show that his perceived disability limited or was perceived to limit a major life activity in order to show evidence of “disability”; all that the employee need plead or prove is that the employer regarded him as physically or mentally impaired. Read More
The Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act does not preempt the California Labor Commissioner from examining whether truck drivers are independent contractors or employees entitled to the benefit of California's wage and hour laws. Read More
