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CA Vacation time Rules:
Living in California it’s easy to feel that we live a place everyone else wants to vacation, that doesn’t mean California employees don’t need time off too.
It may come as a surprise given all the other regulations on time set out in the CA labor code, but there are no laws currently on the books that mandate an obligatory number of paid or unpaid vacation days an employer must provide. That being said, if your company has a well established policy either written or implied and known by all employed, that employees will receive a given amount of paid vacation time, there are guidelines on how that agreement must be fulfilled, at the benefit of the employee.
The labor codes pertaining to vacation time lay it out as follows:
Vacation time is considered park of your wages and is EARNED.
Earned Vacation time accrues as you work, the longer you work the more vacation time you earn.
Once vacation time is earned it CANNOT be taken away or expire.
The employer may place a cap on the number f days that an employee may earn without using any their paid time off.
Because vacation time is considered wages it must be paid upon leaving the company.
Se the case law here for more reference. (Suastez v. Plastic Dress Up (1982) 31 C3d 774)
Because vacation days add up as you work they will be earned as you work, for example, if you are given 10 days a year you do not have to wait a full year to have any vacation time. At six months you would have earned five days. You are responsible for knowing an following your companies policies for requesting time off in order to use your vacation days.
As stated above your employer does have the right to cap the number of days you may “bank” without using them. See (Boothby v. Atlas Mechanical (1992) 6 Cal.App.4th 1595.) This was decided by the courts for the reason that an employee who was with a company for many years and never used any of their vacation time could place an undue hardship on a company upon leaving. Because your accrued vacation time must be paid out the final rate of pay when you leave the company, if you were there for 20 years and raising through the company this pay out could be very large.
At the end of the day the laws surrounding vacation pay are quite good and weigh heavily in favor of the employee. If you have been denied your vacation time or been told it has expired, whether you are still with the company or not we may be able to help you collect.
Contact United Employees Law Group for a FREE and CONFIDENTIAL look at your case.
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