What are the most common San Diego and California wage and hour violations? How do many employees assert unpaid overtime or the failure to reimburse necessary job-related expenses? The wage and hour defense attorneys for a San Diego employer at the Watkins Firm are not only here to defend you in the midst of a dispute, but to help you prevent them from ever getting started.
Key Takeaways About Wage and Hour Defense Attorneys for a San Diego Employer:
- Wage and hour cases continue to increase here in San Diego and across California – especially class action, PAGA cases
- There are steps any California employer can immediately take to reduce the risk of a wage and hour dispute
- The moment you even suspect that one (or a group) of your employees is voicing concern, acting out, or actually threatening you as an employer, it is time to call the Watkins Firm for a free insightful consultation at 858-535-1511.
What are Some of the Most Common Wage and Hour Violations Alleged Against San Diego Employers?
Some of the most common wage and hour violations alleged against San Diego employers include the failure to pay minimum wage, the failure to pay overtime, failure to provide rest and meal breaks for employees working qualifying shifts as well as the failure to reimburse workers for “necessary” job-related expenses. The misclassification of employees as independent contractors and/or exempt from overtime are also quite common. It is also a wage and hour violation to discriminate or retaliate against an employee or group of employees who have filed wage and hour complaints.
It is important to keep extremely accurate payroll records which is why most employers use an external payroll service. Payroll record keeping violations and inaccuracies on wage statements and paystubs are common issues in a wage and hour dispute.
Wage and Hour Defense Attorneys for San Diego and California Employers at the Watkins Firm
The wage and hour defense attorneys for San Diego and California employers at the Watkins Firm have more than 40 years of experience representing, advising and defending San Diego and Southern California employers in wage and hour disputes, PAGA actions, retaliation claims and other employer-related disputes and lawsuits. We only represent employers, and work with our clients to resolve and mitigate issues whenever possible while implementing stronger policies and procedures going forward.
Why are wage and hour lawsuits such a risk in San Diego and across southern California? The simplest reason is employers have not effectively responded to recent developments in arbitration, changing laws regarding paychecks and reporting requirements as well as tactics by plaintiff’s representatives who are targeting these areas of vulnerability. The typical claim goes something like this:
Employee leaves your employ (willingly or not) and contacts a plaintiff lawyer or the California Labor Board complaining that they were forced to work overtime without pay. They produce light evidence based upon after-hours emails and voicemails. They claim they were unable to do the expected work without evening and weekend overtime hours which were unpaid. The employer responds with time cards (often signed by the employee) showing no overtime. The Courts have been siding with employees in these cases resulting in expensive back wages, not to mention income and payroll taxes and other related withholdings.
What can be done to reduce wage and hour litigation exposure? The employer defense attorneys and wage and hour defense lawyers for employers at the Watkins Firm are focused upon the entire employment process from the offer letter through termination. San Diego employers must implement systems and policies which clearly require employees to request written permission to work overtime in advance and carefully document every aspect of wage and hour. Access to work systems and company voice mail may need to be limited during non-working hours.
Pro-Tip: “There are class actions, PAGA wasn’t even heard of in 20 years ago. And now every seminar you hear about is on PAGA defense. There’s sexual harassment, used to be the young, the big game in town. And now you’ve got to check your paycheck stubs to make sure that they’re not spelled wrong or there’s a missed decibel point, or you’re going to get a class action lawsuit filed against you in, in a multitude of ways.
Obviously we have wage and hour disputes. Those are big. They’re everywhere. They’re big in California, they’re big nationally. Well, wage and hour and overtime are similar, but PAGA, a private attorney general claim against the employer is really heating up. There are law firms that just do plaintiff PAGA work, and they send out constant communications to every area of employee you can imagine. And if anyone’s thinking about leaving your employment, they’re going to be tempted to get a little severance pay involuntary.
And then misclassification of independent contractors. California keeps changing the law and the courts keep changing their interpretation of the California law. So yes, they do make it really hard to stay on top of that. Sexual harassment is always a scary thing because you can get sued for sexual harassment and lose, even though no one was actually harassed because you didn’t investigate it correctly or thoroughly. That’s a separate cause of action. Failing to investigate it according to the law, even if your investigation finds out that it was a false claim, which seems terrible, but it’s true. And then discrimination claims are always there. Retaliation again for somebody making a false claim. If you retaliate against them for lying about you and suing and lying about you, you’re still liable for retaliating against a liar. Again, terrible but true. And then general wrongful termination, how people are terminated and whether or not you comply, you can get stuck with 60 days of pay that you inadvertently didn’t know about.
The ones where you can get stuck for attorney’s fees are the ones you’re likely going to see in a lawsuit or a claim against you because the lawyers rarely go after the ones that are only break time, or only mischaracterization of how you write the paycheck. If it’s not something with an attorney’s fees clause, you’re not going to see it. So let’s, let’s talk about attorney’s fees clauses and common overtime issues.
In a wage and hour dispute, the remedy is often for us fix the wage in the problem if there is one. And we do that rather quickly because we get so many of them every day.
So, let’s say you are the plaintiff’s lawyer, and you’re suing my client. Well the minute my client knows something, he’s going to tell me. I’m going to look at whatever he or she may have been doing, I’m going to fix it. It’s usually like the remedy is to fix the way the paycheck’s written or calculated or the breaks or whatever, I’ll fix it. We’ll tell our clients to pay the employee the extra $500 before the lawyer can file a lawsuit. And so if there’s no breach at the time of the lawsuit, there’s no attorney’s fees and the plaintiff lawyer’s case goes away. He has no incentive to bring it!” – Dan Watkins, Founding Partner
Employee manuals, policies and procedure manuals and all internal practices must be reviewed and tightened. The implementation of the policies and procedures and the employee handbook by management must be consistent, well documented, even-handed and backed up by continuous written correspondence with the employee. It is prudent to require the employee to sign a disclaimer at the bottom of the timecard “under penalty of perjury.”
If you are concerned to learn that unpaid overtime lawsuits are such a risk in San Diego we invite you to review our recent Podcast Episode 39 – What Keeps California Employers Up At Night as well as the strong recommendations of our clients and contact the Watkins Firm or call 858-535-1511 for a complimentary consultation today. Learn how the Watkins Firm can work with you to develop strategies that increase your likelihood of reducing unpaid overtime litigation or avoiding it altogether.
