Wage & Hour Issues

Orange County Labor Law Lawyer Prosecuting Wage and Hour Claims

According to state and federal statistics, since 2004, employees all over California have been filing lawsuits involving wage and hour violations, such as unpaid minimum wage, unpaid overtime, failure to provide meal and rest periods, failure to issue accurate wage statements, misclassification of employees as independent contracts, and unpaid overtime, at a staggering rate. This is partly due to the advent of employee-friendly legislation in California, expanded protections within the current law, and favorable court decisions, such as Brinker v. Superior Court (Hohnbaum), 53 Cal. 4th 1004 (Cal. 2012), which was decided by the California Supreme Court in April 2012. The California Supreme Court in Brinker, for example, clarified the meal and rest break protections employees are guaranteed under California law and provided new insight into class actions—a litigation procedure that allows a single employee in California to sue on behalf of employees throughout the State and possibly the United States. Employment law lawyer Jesse Singh regularly prosecutes wage and hour claims against large companies in California, relying on his extensive knowledge about the state of California law and continuing education on wage-and-hour laws affecting employees in Orange County and throughout California.

California and federal wage and hour laws grant employees the right to recover unpaid wages and monetary penalties they have lost due to their employers intentionally or accidentally violating their wage and hour rights. Under these laws, employees who were not paid for all their hours worked, were paid below the Los Angeles City minimum wage, were paid “under the table,” or were not paid correct overtime wages may be entitled to recovery of their unpaid wages, including unpaid overtime wages and unpaid minimum wages. It does not matter whether you are a document or undocumented worker—every employee must be paid for work he or she performed. Although federal law does not grant employees meal and rest breaks, under California Labor Code wage statutes, employees can also recover one additional hour of pay for each day they were not provided a 30-minute meal break or 10-minute rest break. Along with these “monetary damages,” employees who file civil lawsuits also ask employers to pay them penalties. These penalties can range from $750 for an employer failing to permit an employee to inspect his or her employment records to $4,000 for an employer not providing complete and accurate pay stubs, or sometimes even more. When a case goes to trial and the employee wins, employees can additionally recover attorneys’ fees and the costs of litigation; in this way, the law provides an incentive to attorneys to take aggrieved employees’ cases even when the total amount of unpaid wages or penalties is not huge. And as employers come to grips with new wage-and-hour laws and learn the financial risk of losing in a wage and hour dispute in California Superior Court or United States District Court, employees require advocates who understand the changing landscape of wage-and-hour laws and who will work tirelessly to champion employee rights.

Yash Law Group is an employment and labor law firm with extensive experience standing up for consumers and employees in California. Two primary areas of Yash Law Group’s employment and labor law practice are Wage and Hour Violations and Employee Misclassification.