Wage theft questions, answered

Wage theft is any time your employer keeps pay the law says you earned. The most common forms are unpaid overtime, missed or interrupted meal and rest breaks, work done off the clock, late or short final paychecks, illegal deductions, unpaid commissions, and labeling employees as independent contractors so the company can skip overtime and breaks.

For most hourly workers, overtime starts after 8 hours in a workday or 40 hours in a workweek, at one and a half times your regular rate. Work over 12 hours in a day is paid at double time, and the seventh day of work in a single workweek has its own overtime rules (Labor Code section 510).

Some jobs are exempt and some workplaces use approved alternative schedules, so the details depend on your job.

For each workday your employer doesn't provide a required meal or rest period, it owes you one additional hour of pay at your regular rate (Labor Code section 226.7). Most workers are entitled to a 30-minute meal period when they work more than 5 hours, and a second one after 10 hours (Labor Code section 512).

If you're fired, your final wages are due immediately (Labor Code section 201). If you quit without notice, they're due within 72 hours, and if you gave at least 72 hours' notice, on your last day (Labor Code section 202).

If your employer willfully pays late, it can owe you a penalty of one day's wages for each day it's late, up to 30 days (Labor Code section 203).

No. California law makes it illegal to fire or retaliate against you for complaining, in writing or out loud, that you're owed unpaid wages (Labor Code section 98.6). If that happened to you, tell us. Retaliation can be its own claim.

Case evaluations are free. If we take your case, our fee comes out of what we recover from the employer, including costs. If there's no recovery, then you pay nothing. How fees and costs work will always be clearly explained in a written agreement before we start.

Most unpaid wage claims must be filed within three years (Code of Civil Procedure section 338). Some claims can reach back four years when brought under California's Unfair Competition Law (Business and Professions Code section 17208). PAGA penalty claims have a shorter deadline, generally one year.

Every pay period that falls outside the deadline is money you can't recover, so don't wait.

Possibly. California presumes a worker is an employee unless the company proves all three parts of the "ABC test": you're free from its control, your work is outside its usual business, and you run an independent business of the same kind (Labor Code section 2775). Misclassified workers can be owed overtime, break premiums and business expenses.

A class action lets one or more workers bring a case on behalf of everyone affected by the same pay practice. You don't need to recruit coworkers to start. If your employer paid others the same way, the case can cover them. See how wage class actions work.

The Private Attorneys General Act (Labor Code sections 2698 and following) lets a worker who personally suffered a Labor Code violation recover civil penalties on behalf of the state and other affected employees. Part of the penalties goes to the state and part goes to the workers.

Often, yes. An arbitration agreement may change where your own claim is heard, but it doesn't erase your right to be paid. Some claims, including parts of a PAGA claim, can sometimes still go forward in court. It depends on your agreement, so send it to us with your case review.

Your pay stubs, your own notes of the hours you actually worked, and any texts or emails about schedules, breaks or after-hours work. Don't take company documents you aren't allowed to have. See what to gather.