Los Angeles Wage and Hour

Los Angeles is California’s largest city and the country’s second largest. Its metropolitan area has a gross metropolitan product that exceeds $1.0 trillion. One in every six residents of the city work in a creative field. The mean hourly wage in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim Metropolitan Statistical Area as of May 2020 was $30.61. This is higher than the nationwide average. The wages were higher in most of the major occupational groups. As you might expect, employment in the city is highly concentrated in certain fields, such as entertainment, sports, media, and business. However, employment in certain industries such as healthcare and construction, was less busy in the city they are on a nationwide basis. If you believe your employer may not be paying you fairly, you should call the Los Angeles wage and hour attorneys of the Calderone Law Firm.

In California, wage and hour law is governed by state, federal, and local laws. Wage and hour law sets standards for how you should be paid as a nonexempt employee and for what time you can be required to work. It specifies minimum wage, tips, overtime, rest breaks, and meal breaks, among other things. The law that is most beneficial to employees is the one that will be applied.

There are many different wage and hour violations related to which our attorneys could pursue a claim. As a nonexempt employee, you may have grounds to sue if your employer:

• Fails to pay you minimum wage.
• Fails to pay you overtime or double time according to your worked hours.
• Misclassifies you as exempt or as an independent contractor.
• Fails to pay you for all hours worked.
• Tries to make you work off the clock such as be refusing to pay for on-call time.
• Requires you to work through your meal breaks and does not pay for working through those breaks.

In some instances, employers are liable because they enact improper policies that result in an overall loss of pay, such as repeatedly rounding down an employee’s hours when the employee’s timecard shows a few minutes over the hour.

The most favorable minimum wage for Los Angeles employees is the local one: $15 per hour. The size of the employer dictates the state minimum wage. The minimum wage is $13 per hour for those employers that have up to 25 employees. The minimum wage is $14 per hour for employers that have at least 26 employees. All employers are required to pay a minimum wage of $15 per hour by 2023.

Under California law, tipped employees should not be paid a lower minimum wage based on the assumption that they will make enough in tips to make up that difference. Rather, tipped employees, like other employees, must be paid a full minimum wage for each hour they work.

You should receive overtime if you’re a nonexempt worker who works more than 8 hours in a single day or 40 hours in a workweek. If you’ve worked at least 12 hours in one day, you should get paid double time. When you work on a seventh day, you are entitled to time and a half for the first 8 hours of work, but double time for hours beyond that.

As a California employee, you can get a meal break of 30 minutes that is unpaid after you work for five hours in a row. The exception is when you will finish your workday in 6 hours or less and you and the employer agree to waive the break. However, you can’t be forced to work more than 10 hours a day without a second 30-minute meal break; the exception is when the workday is only up to 12 hours. You are also entitled to be a paid rest break that is 10 minutes for each four hours you work, in the middle of the rest period, unless your total time worked each day is under 3 ½ hours.

It can be a challenge to know whether your employer has violated wage and hour law. You should consult an employment lawyer if you suspect your employer has committed improprieties whether willful or inadvertent in calculating your earnings. The knowledgeable principal of our premiere Southern California employment law firm is Vincent Calderone who has more than two decades of experience in litigation. Contact us online or call us at (424) 348-8290.