Overtime Exemptions in California and the Ground Rules
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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