Beverly Hills · All of California
Unpaid overtime lawyer in Los Angeles
Wage cases are the ones people are most sure about and least likely to bring. You know how many hours you worked. You know what landed in your account. The gap isn't a matter of opinion.
What stops people is the size of it. A few hundred a month doesn't feel worth a lawyer. Run it over two or three years, add the penalties California attaches to it, and the number is usually several times what the person expected.
Free, no obligation.
- Freefirst consultation
- No feeunless you win
- You speak to menot an intake line
- Cal. Bar 287341admitted 2012
What you're owed in California
California is more generous than federal law and the rules are not the ones most people assume.
Overtime starts after eight hours in a day, not just after forty in a week. Over twelve hours in a day it doubles. The seventh consecutive day in a workweek has its own rule.
A meal break is unpaid and uninterrupted, and it comes before the end of the fifth hour. Rest breaks are paid, ten minutes for every four hours or major fraction of one. If a break was missed, shortened, or taken with a phone in your hand, the employer owes an hour's pay for that day. Those premiums add up faster than the overtime does.
Then there's everything around the edges: time spent before clocking in, closing up after clocking out, traveling between sites during the day, a split shift, a uniform you had to buy, the mileage on your own car.
Three things employers get wrong
"You're salaried, so there's no overtime." A salary doesn't decide it. The exemption depends on what you actually do all day and on earning at least twice the state minimum wage for full-time work. A manager who spends most of the shift doing the same work as the team is usually not exempt whatever the title says.
"You're a contractor." Since AB 5 the test is the ABC test, and it's demanding. The hiring business has to show all three parts. Being handed a 1099 proves nothing by itself.
"We paid you for the hours you submitted." If the schedule was edited after the fact, or you were told to clock out and finish up, the submitted hours aren't the hours.
Final pay
If you were fired, your final check was due that day. If you quit with at least 72 hours' notice, it was due on your last day, and without notice within 72 hours.
Miss it and the waiting time penalty runs at your daily rate for up to thirty days. That penalty is frequently larger than the unpaid wages that caused it, and it's one of the most commonly ignored rules in California.
Can they fire me for asking?
They're not allowed to, and doing it creates a second claim on top of the first. Retaliation for raising a wage question is unlawful, and the same goes for talking to colleagues about what you're paid.
It still happens. If it happened to you, the firing may be worth more than the wages.
Deadlines
Wage claims reach back years rather than months, which is why the totals surprise people. There are different periods for different parts of a claim, so the day you call decides how far back the recovery can reach. Every month you wait is a month that drops off the far end.
If you've already left the job, that clock has been running since you did.
What it costs
Nothing to talk to me. If I take it, you pay nothing unless money is recovered for you, and case costs come out of the recovery rather than your pocket. If we don't win, you don't pay. In writing before anything is signed.
Worth gathering
Pay stubs if you kept them, any schedule or timekeeping screenshots, messages about hours or clocking out, and the dates you started and finished. Your own rough notes of the hours you actually worked are worth more than people think, because California puts the burden on the employer to keep accurate records, and when those records are missing or wrong, your account carries real weight.
Don't go back into a work system you no longer have access to in order to get any of it.
Questions people ask
Am I owed overtime if I'm paid a salary? Often yes. The salary is one of two conditions and the duties are the one that decides it.
What are the rules on meal and rest breaks? Thirty minutes before the end of the fifth hour, ten paid minutes every four, and an hour of pay for each day a break was owed and not given.
Get in touch
Beverly Hills, working across California.
Name, a number, one sentence about the job and what's missing. I'll call you back. Don't attach documents here.
Sending this form doesn't make me your lawyer, and no deadline is protected until we've both signed a written agreement.
Free consultation
Tell me what happened
Ten minutes on the phone is usually enough for me to tell you whether you have a case. If you do not, I will say so on the call.