California has long has a reputation of one of the states that has most protective of employee rights, and all businesses in California or employing California resident must be aware of the laws governing overtime pay. All time during which an employee is “under the control of the employer,” including daily work duties, closing duties, uniform changes, and other job-related tasks is to be compensated at the full hourly rate. As a California employee, it is important to know your rights and laws.

California law requires not only that employees pay 1.5 times your standard hourly rate after 40 hours in a week as mandated by federal law, but also after 8 hours in a single day and on the 7th consecutive day of work and beyond. Employers must also pay double the standard hourly rate after 12 working hours in a single 24 hour period, after 8 hours on a 7th consecutive day of work, and under other circumstances such as state and national holidays. Employees on “standby” or “on call” status must also be paid for their commitment whether they are called to active duty or not.

State law provides very clear outlines of how workers are to be compensated for their time as well as a very specific set of exemptions. The major exempted classes are Executive, Administrative, Professional and Computer Professional categories, and in the view of the law these classes of employee are paid a salary for completing their job duties as opposed to an hourly rate for their time.

Exempted employees are not covered by the standard California overtime pay law, and must meet a number of requirements in order to become exempt. An Executive Exemption is only triggered when an employee both makes at least $640 weekly and meets certain requirements on level of authority within the company.

Administrative exemptions are commonly limited to the supporting fields of companies such as human resources, finance and legal departments, and even within these areas an employee must hold influence on significant matters before becoming ineligible for overtime, making this one of the most difficult exemptions to prove.

The Professional exemption only applies to employees holding advanced degrees, recognized merit in directly creative artistic pursuits, or licensure by the State of California to practice in a field such as law, engineering or accounting. This exemption also requires that an employee have a broad measure of control over day to day duties as well as a high level of operating freedom.

California is well-known for its high-tech culture, and the design of the Computer Professional exemption reflects this. Only computer programmers who play a central role in design and analysis of software are exempt from the overtime law, with most technicians who spend 50 percent or more of their time writing code for specific tasks entitled to overtime pay under California state law.

The California state overtime law is intended to limit abuses of employee freedom by companies, outlining acceptable compensation and time-tracking to protect their rights. Exemptions from this protection are extremely limited, and the burden of proving the validity of an exemption always falls on the employer.

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In every work environment, there are times when you will have more work to do than time would allow, and you result to working overtime. Overtime is considered the time that an employee works that is beyond the stipulated working hours or the usual working hours agreed between the employer and the employee. In California State, overtime compensation refers to the payment an employee receives for working more than 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. The hourly rate of overtime pay is usually higher than the normal rate of payment.

Overtime compensation is a policy in California that applies to all weekly and hourly paid staff members who are non-exempted and whose employment is temporary, limited service or even regular full-time and part-time. The policy dictates that an employee cannot donate their services to a firm without being paid for those hours worked.

However, in California, there are employees who may be exempt from overtime compensation. Any other employee who is not excluded from overtime compensation should get paid or get compensated for overtime worked in a firm.

Here are some of the workers who may be exempt from overtime compensation in California:

• An administrative exemption for someone who does over half of his or her duties directly for a business owner with limited oversight will be exempt. Your job shouldn’t be one in production position, and it should involve mainly operational matters and affect management policy.
• If you are in the executive position as a CEO and operate as being part of the management team you also fall under this exempt class. You can manage a minimum of two people, and you’ve the power to promote hire or fire employees.
• People who are professionals in that they are required to have an exclusive license so as to undertake their work may be exempt from overtime compensation. These are people whose jobs require skills and talents like doctors, lawyers and teachers.
• Other people under this class are people who spend at least half of their time doing sales off the premises of the business. They commonly get referred to as outside salesperson and in most cases, they are paid on commission.
• A caregiver is someone in this instance that is an in-home caregiver and is exempt from overtime compensation. In case you are one who works in a nursing facility or group home, you won’t fall in this category.
• Lastly, professionals who spend more than half their time in design and analysis as computer professionals will also be exempt from overtime compensation. Within California, the laws relating to overtime payment are sometimes complicated, and one needs to study them well to know whether they are exempt from overtime compensation or not.

If you, or someone you know, are facing legal issues in the workplace United Employees Law Group has the answers. Call Today for your free and confidential case review. Please feel free to CONTACT US with any questions about this blog or your exact situation.

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Increasing work hours today has led to the concept of overtime payment worldwide. Employees across the globe who work overtime exceeding the regular work hours are compensated in the form of overtime payment subjected to rules and regulations set by the company. In California which is witnessing rise in overtime activities, there has been much debate about how to ensure that the employees are eligible for the overtime payment or not.

According to the country guidelines and laws, most of the employers in California are subjected to pay overtime wages to their workers and employee. The payment is considered to exactly 50 percent of the individual’s hourly salary which in legal terms means “time and a half” payment. Usually anything above 40 hours a week or 8 hours daily is considered to be overtime in California. But not every employee or worker is entitled to overtime payment; certain laws of overtime exemptions have been set in California to ensure that the individual not eligible is exempted from the overtime payment. Let’s look at three most important categories of overtime exemptions in California.

Professional Exemption

Employees who are majorly working in a field of science or research that requires advanced and deep knowledge are usually considered exempted from the overtime. Also, individuals who are involved in creative work like innovation, invention, art or talent are also subjected to professional exemption. There are usually three different listings of professional exemption which includes learned professional exemption, creative professional execution and computer professional execution. In case of learned and creative professional execution employees receiving a weekly salary of $800 and spending more than 50 percent of time behind advance studies or creative works are not paid for overtime, while computer professionals are not usually considered for overtime according to overtime exemptions in California.

Executive Exemption

An employee of an executive post who looks after and manages a department, enterprise or a certain assigned division and has the authority and power to recruit and fire other people is not considered for overtime payments. It also incorporates employees who earn more than $800 weekly, spend 50 percent of their entire time managing the owner’s company and supervising at least two other individuals.

Administrative Exemption  

The criteria set for employees to be exempted from overtime under administrative exemption includes an individual who is earning more than $800 weekly and performs a certain set of work directly related to the business management. Along with discretion power the employee should also be paying pivotal role in making independent decisions in case of important business issues including operations management and business policy making.

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