Most employees are incredibly grateful for their job and the ability to pay their bills on time. But, when it comes to California employee benefits are you sure that you are being treated fairly?

If you aren’t sure, you should continue reading the article below where we will be talking about the different employee benefits that you should be concerned you are getting.

Getting Minimum Wage

This is always a tricky topic because most people just assume that wherever they work they are entitled to a specific dollar amount for minimum wage. This is true.

But, did you also know that if your particular state, in this case, California, also has its own minimum wage laws, that as an employee you are entitled to whichever is the higher wage?

In the state of California, right now in 2019, the minimum wage is:

• For less than 25 employees $11.00
• For more than 26 employees $12.00

The Federal Minimum Wage is only $7.25 So if you are not receiving one of the aforementioned wages, but are instead receiving Federal Wages, this is something you need to look into as soon as possible because you aren’t receiving the wages you should be!

There are, of course, exceptions. Usually, these exceptions are for people that earn tips and earn more than $30 worth of tips in a single month. Instead of being paid a state or federal wage, they are paid a lower wage and can keep their tips.

Overtime Hours At Your Job

According to the California employee benefits, there are no limits in terms of hours a person can work each week. However, because 40 hours is the set standard of work hours in a week, any time worked over 40 hours will require overtime.

Overtime at your job will be defined as being at least 1.5 times what you usually make per hour at your job.

Also, if you work on the weekends or on holidays, the law states that you are not required to receive overtime unless you worked more than 40 hours in that same week.

Leave Time

The California employee benefits laws state that you are allowed to have leave time from your job.

In all, employees are eligible and able to take up to 12 weeks off per year – unpaid thanks to the FMLA. To top it all off, the FMLA also requires that employees be given an extra 26 weeks off to take care of a spouse, child or even a parent if they have had a serious injury or ailment or if they are a serviceman or servicewoman in the military.

There are stipulations to this.

• The employer must have at least 50 employees
• You have worked at your job for 12 months
• You have worked at least 1,250 hours at your job

California has its own sets of laws too which include:

• Caring for a sick loved one
• Recovering from childbirth
• Disability leave
• Bereavement leave

The state of California has some of the most generous leave time laws in the entire country. While the 4 examples mentioned above are pretty extreme, you can also have leave time for other situations such as needing time off to attend a child’s school activity.

There may be more stipulations depending on if your job belongs to a union or not.

Most employers will take it upon themselves to create their own employment terms, and although they do have to follow specific laws such as the ones above, the real point to all of this is to create proper humane working conditions while still allowing the employee to earn a wage that they can live off of.

If you think you’ve been discriminated against, or you think your employer is breaking one of the laws or regulations above, it’s a good idea to speak to a lawyer about your legal rights and California employee benefits.

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