California Legal Blog – A Deep Dive Into Issues That Affect Your Life - Page 4

In California, you can be disciplined for submitting a timesheet late or with errors. However, employers are not allowed to delay or dock your pay for a timesheet mishap. Instead, the discipline is limited to warnings, suspensions, or terminations but cannot be done in a discriminatory fashion. In this article, I discuss what you need …

The state of California has numerous laws and regulations that govern how and when paychecks are to be issued. You should be aware of five key rights: what your pay stub has to include, when you are entitled to your wages, your rights to examine your payroll records, what has to be included in your …

In California, the statute of limitations to sue for wrongful termination is either: two years for breach of an implied employment contract or for public policy violations; or three years for FEHA violations, WARN Act violations, or whistleblower retaliation (including Sarbanes-Oxley Act); or four years for breach of a written employment contract. Note that in …

California Labor Code section 2802 requires employers to reimburse their workers for business expenses. Those business expenses include anything you spend in the discharge of your job duties or to follow your employer’s instructions. If you are not reimbursed for these expenses, then you can recover them, as well as attorneys’ fees, in a wage …

In California, a split shift is a work day that is interrupted by unpaid time off work that is not a meal break. You have a split shift if you work in the morning, are given several hours off, and then work again in the evening. You may be entitled to a shift split premium …

Tip pooling is lawful in California so long as the pool does not include managers who have the authority to hire or fire you. Managers can only join the tip pool if they do the same work as you. Employers can have mandatory tip pooling arrangements and must distribute funds in the tip pool fairly and …

In most states, employers can never withhold tips or deduct wages based on the amount of tips earned, unless it is for a credit card fee or a tip pool. This is regardless of whether the employer takes a tip credit. Managers and supervisors can only keep tips that they directly and solely earned, and …

California’s salary transparency law requires many employers with 15 or more employees to include a pay range in their job postings. It also allows you to request a pay range for your own position. Employers have to provide state regulators with data about the pay they offer. If the law is violated, you can file …

Most nurses do get paid overtime. As a nurse, you are entitled to 1.5 times your regular rate of pay for every hour you work past 40 hours in a 7-day period. However, some nurses – especially registered nurses – may be considered exempt employees. As an exempt employee, you are generally not entitled to overtime …

You can request your personnel file from a former employer by contacting them, often in writing, and demanding access to the file. Employers are legally required to maintain records about your time at work. You generally have a right to review these records. Your personnel files can be valuable evidence if you have suffered a …

In California, the minimum wage for servers in 2025 is $16.90 per hour. In some cities and counties, the minimum wage is higher. Unlike in some other states, servers and other workers in California are entitled to the minimum wage in addition to the tips they earn. Do California’s minimum wage laws apply to servers? …

As of January 1, 2026, to be considered an exempt employee in the U.S., a worker must be paid a minimum salary of $684 per week, or $35,568 per year. Exempt workers in California, meanwhile, must be paid a salary that is at least twice the state’s minimum wage. The 2026 California minimum wage is $16.90 …

Commission-based pay is workplace compensation based on an employee’s sales productivity. It can be tied to the overall quantity of sales or the value of the things sold. The commission agreement sets out how your particular commission pay is generally calculated. State and federal laws regulate commission-based pay. Four key things to know are: you can …

In California, employers are required to fully reimburse you when you use your personal vehicles for business purposes. In total, there are 4 ways to calculate your reimbursement: Lump-sum payments, Actual mileage, Actual expenses, or A mixture of fixed and variable rates. Many employers adopt the IRS’s reimbursement rates, which go by actual mileage, as …

Warehouse workers often face significant wage and hour issues in the workplace. 5 of the most common are: minimum wage protections, overtime pay, payments for rest and meal breaks, being required to work off the clock, and receiving unpaid wages after termination. These concerns are growing more and more important as large companies, like Amazon …

California does not have a state employment law that defines part-time work as being less than a certain number of hours. Instead, it is generally up to the employer to define what “part-time” means. The Labor Market Information Division of the California Employment Development Department has a non-legally binding definition of part-time work as fewer than …

The general rule is that California employers cannot take away wage payments.1 This includes sales commissions that have been earned.2 However, employers can carve out exceptions to this rule in the commission agreement, which is an employment contract. These exceptions in the employment agreement must be tied to the employee’s sales rather than general business …

In California, marital status is a protected class under the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA). This means that employers cannot discriminate against you based on your marital status. If you are fired, demoted, passed over, harassed, or otherwise retaliated against based on whether you are married, you have legal recourse under anti-discrimination laws in the …

In California, the Order, Decision or Award (ODA) of the Labor Commissioner is the ruling of the hearing officer in a wage claim, often for wage theft. ODAs are issued after the wage claim hearing. The decision indicates who won the hearing and how much the employer must pay to the worker. The ODA can …

TL;DR In most cases, your car insurance covers someone else driving your car if you gave them permission. If another driver caused the crash, that driver is generally liable, though your rates may still increase. If your friend caused the accident with your permission, your insurance usually pays first under permissive use. Your coverage typically …

In California, if you report your income on a Form 1099, you are an independent contractor, while if you report it on a W-2 form, you are an employee. Payroll taxes are automatically withheld if you are a W-2 employee; meanwhile, if you are an independent contractor, you are responsible for paying them. If you …

As a hospital worker in California, you may be subject to special overtime rules. If you are classified as an exempt worker, you are not entitled to overtime (time-and-a-half) pay unless your employer chooses to provide it. If you are non-exempt, you are entitled to overtime pay for working more than: 8 hours in a …