An employer willfully fails to pay a discharged employee's final wages on time. What 'waiting time penalty' may the employee recover?
Explanation
Labor Code §203 continues the discharged employee's wages as a penalty at the same daily rate until the final wages are paid, capped at 30 calendar days. (a) borrows a treble-damages multiplier from other statutes; §203 is a time-based penalty, not a multiple of the debt. (c) invents a flat sum, so a $600-a-day superintendent and a $150-a-day laborer would recover the same amount - the opposite of how §203 works. (d) substitutes the one-hour figure from the §226.7 meal-and-rest premium, a different remedy for a different violation. The penalty runs only where the failure to pay was willful.
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