Overtime Pay Laws in California
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.
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