[ad_1]
California employees who are required to work on their half-hour lunch break or 10-minute breaks are entitled to an additional hour of pay at their “regular rate of pay.” What that rate represents for the thousands of people whose regular wages include commissions or bonuses was only clear on Thursday, when the state’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of the employees.
The case concerned a former hotel bartender, Jessica Ferra, whose salary consisted of an hourly wage and an additional “incentive†sum guaranteed each quarter. For days when she had to work during lunch or a break, her employer, the Loews Hollywood Hotel, only paid Ferra hourly wages and did not include a percentage of the quarterly bonus.
A Los Angeles judge and a state appeals court ruled in the hotel’s favor, saying an employee’s regular rate of pay is only hourly wages. The state’s High Court on Thursday disagreed unanimously.
The Meal and Rest Break Act, which dates back to 2000, is similar to another California law that allows workers to pay an hour and a half for every hour of overtime they work in excess of eight hours a day, said Judge Goodwin Liu. in the 7-0 decision. This law states that the additional pay is based on an employee’s “normal rate of pay”, which the courts have defined as the total remuneration that the employee usually receives, including hourly wages, bonuses and other incentives.
A worker’s “normal rate of pay”, a term used in the Meal Break Act, is certainly not lower than her “normal rate of pay,” Liu said. He said employees whose wages include piece work – compensation based on the number of products they can produce – are entitled to be paid the same as paid employees only when they have to. work during meal or rest breaks.
Previous court rulings, Liu said, established a policy of interpreting labor laws “liberally (…) to promote the protection of employees.”
California law allows most workers a 30-minute meal break after five hours and 10-minute breaks every four hours.
Anticipating a possible adverse ruling, Loews, backed by employer groups, had asked the court to apply such a ruling only to future cases, saying it would otherwise cost employers millions of dollars. Liu said the hotel had not provided any proof of its claim – but even if it was correct, the millions rightly belonged to workers who had been denied their breaks.
The decision is “a victory for workers,” said Dennis Moss, a lawyer for Ferra, whose class action seeks compensation for all Loews employees in similar circumstances.
This will especially help employees whose wages consist mostly of commissions added to their hourly wages, said Michael Rubin, a San Francisco labor attorney who has filed arguments in the case. Rubin said he and his colleagues negotiated a multimillion-dollar settlement for a group of banking consultants in a similar case awaiting review by a federal judge in San Jose.
Faced with tougher penalties, Rubin said, employers will be “much more stringent” in complying with rules on meal and rest breaks.
A hotel lawyer declined to comment on the decision. An attorney for employer groups and the United States Chamber of Commerce was unavailable for comment.
The case is Ferra v Loews Hollywood Hotel, S259172.
Bob Egelko is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @BobEgelko
[ad_2]
