With so many lawsuits involving situations where employers have misclassified nonexempt employees as exempt employees, it’s vital that employers understand the differences and the eligibility for each. This article looks at the classifications of exempt and nonexempt employees according to California laws.

California Exempt and Nonexempt Employee Classification

Salary 

To be exempt, an employee must be earning more than twice the minimum wage and must be in full-time employment. Earning is not an automatic qualification for exemption.

Exempt employees receive full weekly pay for all the weeks they worked. Therefore, the number of deductions that can be made on an exempt employee’s salary are few.

Job Title

An employee’s job title is not a determining factor. A big job title employee may still be nonexempt, as long as the job duties do not conform to the requirements to be exempt.

Duties Test

Employees under California laws need work half of the job time on exempt duties for them to become exempt employees.

A majority of employees classified as being exempt regularly make independent decisions at their places of work. Their jobs involve evaluating situations and deciding on the course of action independently.

Determination by California’s Labor Commissioner

A labor commissioner will examine the duties performed by an employee to determine if they’re to be categorized as exempt or nonexempt.

Deductions From The Pay of Exempt Employees

Employers should not deduct the pay of exempt employees for the day’s work is unavailable, so long as the employees are willing and in a position to perform work. In such cases, California laws on exempt employees require that they be paid the full weeks’ pay, even if they worked for one day.

California vs Federal laws on Exemptions

These are slight differences in the way federal and state laws apply to employee exemptions for specific job descriptions. The following are exemptions for California job duties.

Executives

Managers are still required to meet the requirements to be exempt. Otherwise, they would remain to be nonexempt.

Professional Employees

They still need to meet specific requirements for professional exemption.

Employees in Administrative Positions

Not every senior employee is exempt unless their duties match those performed by exempt employees according to California laws.

Computer Professionals

In the year 2000, state law was amended to be in line with federal law regarding computer professionals, exempting them from overtime.

Artists

Not many artists qualify to be exempt under California laws due to the nature of their work; most are self-employed, with full control of the hours they work.

Salespeople

They’re categorized into inside and outside salespeople to define their statuses as either exempt or nonexempt as defined by California laws.

Photo Credit: Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock.com

The post Understanding Exempt Employees vs. Nonexempt Employees in California appeared first on UELG.

There are several lawsuits which have resulted from misclassification of employees by employers. Some employers classify employees as exempt while they are clearly nonexempt. To avoid getting on the wrong side of the law, employers should carefully analyze their employees’ work duties or receive advice from experts such as experienced human resource professionals and attorneys.

Generally, the laws of the State of California presume all employees as nonexempt. Nonexempt employees strictly adhere to California’s Labor Code. In other words, they are not exempt from factors such as overtime pay and the minimum wage. On the other hand, as the name suggests, exempt employees are exempt from certain wage and hour requirements because of their pay and duties.

Job Titles

More than 50% of the time of exempt employees is spent performing exempt duties. It should be noted that job titles are irrelevant. Having a big title does not guarantee or meet the threshold of classifying an employee as an exempt employee. For the Labor Commissioner to determine whether an employee is exempt or nonexempt, he or she looks into the duties performed by an employee during workweeks. Sales employees must earn at least twice the minimum wage every month for full-time employment.

Exempt Employee Duties

Mostly, employees classified as exempt employees exercise independent judgment and discretion in performing their duties. For example, they may fire and hire other employees. They have management duties that involve directing the work of other employees or departments in an enterprise. They make crucial decisions after considering various possibilities.

Exempt employees are paid for a full week salary whenever they perform their duties any week. As such, there are limited deductions to an exempt employee’s salary. If there is the unavailability of work at any given time in a week, as long as the exempt employee was ready to work, he or she is still entitled to a full week of pay.

Managerial and administrative employees are considered as exempt employees unless they do not meet certain requirements. They are strictly classified as nonexempt employees if they do not meet these requirements. Note that not all professional employees are classified as exempt employees. There are legal requirements that they must meet for them to be classified as such.

Artists

According to a California law amendment in the year 2000, some computer professionals have an overtime exemption. The situation is different with artists since they self-employed meaning that they have the control over the nature of their work. In the case of sales members, they are classified as either outside or inside salespeople for simplicity in classifying them as either nonexempt or exempt employees. For easy evaluation and differentiation between nonexempt and exempt employees, one may use the exempt/nonexempt wizard tool or nonexempt vs. exempt forms and checklists.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock/Rawpixel.com

The post The Difference Between Exempt and Non-Exempt Employees in California appeared first on UELG.

Overtime can be determined as the time employees work in excess of the average working hours of 8 hour day and 40 hour workweek as defined by California law. Over the past years, most of the employers in California have exploited their employees by making them work past the regular working hours. They had taken advantage of using them without overtime payment pay since there were no laws to protect the employee’s rights.

This went on until groups of employees came together and pressed for the change in laws through unionizing, lawsuits, and lobbying. The multiple pronged efforts from employees who believed they deserved better helped change the payment landscape in California and even in federal law over the course of many years.

Non-Exempt Employees

California overtime work laws involve sets of rules that force employers to pay their non-exempt employees for overtime work. This overtime consists of working past stipulated daily regular hours or average weekly hours. The non-exempt employees who qualify for the overtime pay must meet some set requirements for their eligibility to be proven.

Eligible Employees

According to the rules an eligible employee should be over 18 years of age and should not be employed in any of these offices or companies; executive, administrative, as professional workers, or working in a computer software field. The laws also include a person who was legally permitted to leave school and work when they are over 16 years of age.

The current minimum wage for an employee is $10 per hour for regular hours. The overtime pay according to Californian laws should be twice the standard pay for regular working hours. To answer the question of how much should be the for overtime work in California, the following breakdown is the best answer: employees working past the typical eight working hours daily and those working over 40 hours in the average workweek should be Paid 1.5 times the minimum wage for regular hours.

Double Pay Overtime Requirements

Moreover, the employees who work for over twelve hours in a day should be spent twice the average hourly salary. Finally, twice the daily wage is also applied to those employees who work for over 8 hours for the day for seven days consecutively.

The current status of employees in California depicts the work of the laws in that the rules have helped them a lot regarding their rights. Although these laws have been seen to be so helpful, it is quite unfortunate that some employers take advantage of employees’ ignorance and not respect the rules.

Photo Credit: vinnstock/Shutterstock.com

The post Overtime Pay Laws in California appeared first on UELG.