California Overtime, under California law, is awarded to a non-exempt employee when an employee works over 8 hours in a day. Overtime must be paid at the rate of 1 ½ times the employees rate of pay, and two times the rate of pay when an employee works over 12 hours per day. In addition, employees are also entitled to overtime if they work more than 40 hours in a week or work for seven consecutive days. Such employees must be paid 1 ½ times their rate of pay.
 
Employers frequently fail to pay overtime for two reasons. The first is economics. It is simply cheaper and less costly to play straight wages, or to label someone “salaried, exempt.” Unfortunately, what an employer realizes is that when a misclassified employee makes a claim, they are faced with paying the overtime wages, penalties, interest, and attorney fees. This mistake can be very costly.
 
The second reason employers fail to pay overtime, is a misunderstanding of the law. There are many myths that employers follow such as “if I just give an employer the job title of manager or supervisor, I can pay them a salary only and consider them exempt from overtime.” This is incorrect, since among other tests, the duties of the employee determine whether or not they are exempt and not simply the job title.
 
When an employer is taken to task on the overtime issue and has misclassified the employee, a knowledgeable labor law attorney will investigate the claim and in some instances other witnesses come forth to claim their overtime, costing the employer far more than they would have paid with a proper classification.
 
It is a common response of employers to initially deny liability of overtime claims. In some cases employers feel that they have “paid the employee enough.” In other cases, they paint the employee as a poor worker to take the attention off of the real issue which is overtime pay. In other situations it is not uncommon for the employer to hire a general practice attorney who is inexperienced with overtime claims and/or labor law. In this instance, the lawyer must be educated as to his or her clients exposure to such claims. This can be a very expensive education for his client, the employer.