What Every Californian Should Know about Working Overtime
California Overtime under California law is awarded to an employee when an employee works over eight hours in a day. When this happens the worker must get time and half over what the employer normally will pay. If the worker works 12 hours a day he or she is entitled two times the rate of pay. This doesn't just reflect in the amounts of hours in the day but also if the employee works more then 40 hours a week for seven consecutive days. When this happens the employee is entitled time and half as well.
Employers sometimes fail to pay for these extra wages for two reasons. The first one of course is economics. Employers will rather label someone as a salary employee. It is cheaper for an employer to pay a person straight wages then to pay all these overtime wages. Though, if an employee makes a claim the employer could be faced with the problem of paying the employee OT wages, penalties, interest and all this could be very costly.
The second reason employers fail to pay for the OT is a misunderstanding of the law. Most employers feel that if they give an employee a title as manager or supervisor that the employee then would be exempt from getting the overtime wages that come with working extra hours. But the problem with that thinking is that the title doesn't neccessarily make them exempt form overtime but the duties that they do determines whether their exempt.
When an employer is taken to task on the overtime issue and has misclassified the employee, a good labor law attorney will investigate the claim. The big hit that employers will take is if other misclassified employee gets wind of this and decided to follow suit then the employers will be out a lot more then if he or she would had just paid accordingly to duties whether or not if they are exempt and not simply the job title.
Most employers deny liability of overtime claims. Some employers will feel like they have paid the employee enough as it is. In other cases some employers will hire an inexperienced practice attorney with OT claims or labor law. This could be a very expensive lesson education for his client which is the employer.
Ulises Tarmet is a paralegal who has worked with many California Overtime Lawyers educating many clients about California Overtime Laws.
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