The California Public Policy has always been encouraging the complete and duly paid incomes to the employee. Moreover, in this regard, the “Labor Code Section 203” was also implemented by the authorities so that the employers must follow this law when it comes to the payment of wages to an employee. This Section allows for the implication of certain declared penalties on the employers in case they fail to pay the employees their due wages on the declared time. This penalty doesn’t need any justification to be implemented on the employer that whether he or she may be doing a particular action willfully or not, it all comes to the pivot that the employer is well aware of all his/her actions and deeds, and he is having a control on them as well, hence leading him or her to fail to perform a particular act that he was declared to do.
The penalty will not be assessed automatically, but under the light of “god faith dispute”, it will definitely prevent the penalty from being imposed because of the wages that are still due to be paid. If your business has been sued for labor law violations relating to waiting time, a class action lawyer is best suited to assist your company.
This penalty requires a proper legal agreement between the employer and the employee along with some sort of discharge or quit, including lay-off as well.
Wages are defined in the light of the “Labor Code Section 200”, and the said penalties are also applied in case of failure to pay the “defined” wages to the employee. Hence, if in the eyes of law, all the declared amount of wages is paid off to the employees then all the available compensations are also meant to be considered in this regard. It is to be noted here that expenses are not the part of wages. Only in cases where some sort of overtime was declared legally in the contract on regular bases in the schedule, then its wage will also be included in the penalty being discussed. It is to be kept in mind here that while calculating the amount of penalty, the occasional or undeclared/irregular overtime will not be considered.
The daily pay rate of an employee is taken into consideration while calculating the amount of penalty in such a way that the days for which the employee was not being paid his/her wage are multiplied with the fixed amount of the daily wage, all this is considered for only 30 days maximum. This does not stands that for a period of 30 days, the wages will be continued, it just states that the employee is basically entitled only to wage that is worth of 30 working days. These 30 days are viewed in accord to the calendar, including all the weekends and public holidays, or all those days in which the employee is not supposed to work. However, the penalty will cease to act, if the said and due wages are paid off. The action can be commenced by simply filing a complaint in the court but if the complaint is filed by the employee with the standards of “Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE)”, then it will not be considered an action and will fail to stop the penalty from being imposed and continued on.
Wages do not imply the penalty for the waiting time, hence, in this regard, nothing is deducted from the amount paid as penalty.
It is to be noted that in the questions mentioned below, all the basic conditions for the implication of penalty are considered and observed, moreover, no “good faith dispute” is being considered since there are no wages due in case an employee is entitled to waiting time.
Does the penalty for holding up time apply to low maintenance and impermanent staff or just full-time staff?
The penalty for holding up time applies to all staff paying little respect to status, exclusion, non-exception, full-time, low maintenance, temporary, trial, or something else. Since they are not “laborers,” the discipline does not stretch out to self-employed entities or volunteers.
