Hawthorne Lawyers for Employment Law Matters

Hawthorne, also known as the City of Good Neighbors, is located within in the 17-city South Bay region of Southern California and served by two major freeways. Historically, the aerospace industry was rooted in the city, but the local economy is now powered in other ways. As of the 2020 census, its population was 88,083 people spread out over an area of 6.1 square miles. In Hawthorne, as in other cities in California, employees should be paid overtime for extra work they do beyond the usual workweek. If you believe you have an overtime claim, you should call the seasoned Hawthorne wage and hour attorneys of the Calderone Law Firm. We are dedicated to pursuing the best results for our clients.

The federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and the California Labor Code regulate how overtime is paid and whether you are eligible for overtime. Together they set a standard overtime pay rate. Overtime is based on your regular rate of pay, meaning the compensation you usually earn for the job you do. Regular rate of pay can include hourly earnings or salary, commission, and piecework earnings, but in all cases, the regular rate of pay cannot be less than the applicable minimum wage . Bonuses are included in the regular rate of pay if they are nondiscretionary.

You are entitled to overtime as a nonexempt employee if you worked more than 40 hours in a workweek or 8 hours in a workday. Overtime pay is calculated at 1 ½ times your ordinary rate of pay. If you work more than 12 hours in a day or more than 8 when it is the seventh day in a row of work. Your employer is required to pay overtime whether or not it authorized the work you performed.

Sometimes employers commit wage theft, whether intentionally, wanting to avoid paying, or inadvertently due to a failure to understand their legal obligations. It would be an overtime violation if your employer tried to avoid paying overtime by equalizing the hours of certain employees or failed to pay overtime to nonexempt, qualified employees that worked through breaks or brought work home to finish.

Importantly, the law requires that you be compensated for any hours you are suffered or permitted to work, regardless of whether you were required to do so. However, employers can discipline employees who violate an overtime policy without the appropriate authorization to do so. In other words, you can’t purposefully stop the employer from knowing about your unauthorized overtime and try to claim it later, but your employer has to keep accurate records and pay work it allowed to be performed.

Under the FLSA, specific employees are exempt from overtime rules, but most workers are nonexempt, meaning that wage and hour laws apply to them. California employers can deny workers who are “exempt” overtime pay. Under the FLSA, there are five categories of workers that are exempt from overtime: executives, administrative workers, professionals, inside sales workers, and computer professionals. These have specific definitions. Executives include management roles. Administrative workers are often office workers. Professionals can include those who are licensed to perform their jobs such as doctors, teachers, and architectures. Inside sales workers are those who get a substantial commission and base pay that is 1 ½ times minimum wage in California. The computer professionals exemption is meant to address those who work in creative and independent environments, such as programmers.

The attorneys for an employer must be able to prove that a worker fits into an exemption, as well as salary and payroll responsibility requirements to justify the employer not paying overtime. Some employers are unscrupulous about misclassifying workers to avoid paying overtime, while others are careless or not knowledgeable. If your employer failed to pay you overtime and you believe you were nonexempted from labor laws, you should talk to a seasoned Hawthorne overtime claims lawyer.

Overtime pay can add up. When an employer withholds overtime that was owed, it is known as wage theft. The Calderone Law Firm is a pre-eminent Hawthorne employment law firm with experience handling overtime claims. Our founder Vincent Calderone has more than 20 years of experience fighting for employees who were the victims of wage theft. Give us a call at (424) 348-8290 or contact us online.