Yêu cầu về Việc làm

Quy tắc

Anyone who works for you is an employee unless all three ABC prongs in section 2775 hold, except that a construction subcontractor is judged instead on the section 2781 checklist, which begins with a written subcontract and a CSLB licence covering the scope of the work.

Khi nào áp dụng — và khi nào không

• –All three ABC prongs must hold at once. Failing any one of them makes the worker an employee.
• –Section 2781 is not a general escape hatch. It is a separate route out of the ABC test for construction subcontracting, and every criterion in it has to be met.
• –Section 2750.5 makes a valid contractor's licence a condition of independent-contractor status wherever the work requires one, so an unlicensed sub cannot be an independent contractor at all.
• –The general business-to-business exemption in section 2776 is a different checklist reaching a different population: its own criteria apply where no CSLB licence is required.

So sánh minh họa

Nhầm lẫn thường gặp

• –Providing your own tools and negotiating your own rates are section 2776 criteria, not section 2781 ones. The words tools, equipment and rates do not appear in section 2781 at all.
• –Prong B is the one that usually fails on a jobsite. Framing hired by a framing business is inside the usual course of that business, which is the reason section 2781 exists.
• –The ABC test no longer sits in section 2750.3. That section was repealed and the test now lives in section 2775 and the sections following it.

Quy tắc

Pay 1.5x the regular rate after 8 hours in a workday and after 40 hours in a workweek, 2x after 12 hours in a day, and never count an hour that already earned daily overtime a second time toward the 40.

Khi nào áp dụng — và khi nào không

• –The rules run on the employee's regular rate of pay, which is the figure section 510 names, not necessarily the posted base hourly rate.
• –A workweek is a fixed, regularly recurring period of 168 hours, seven consecutive 24-hour periods, and weekly overtime is measured inside that fixed week.
• –A properly adopted alternative workweek schedule under Wage Order 16 can authorize up to 10 hours a day inside a 40-hour week without a daily overtime premium.
• –The seventh consecutive day worked in one workweek carries its own premium, separate from the daily and weekly triggers.

So sánh minh họa

Overtime hours for the week = daily overtime hours + weekly hours over 40 that were not already daily overtime.

Nhầm lẫn thường gặp

• –Five 9-hour days total 45 hours, and that is 5 overtime hours, not 10. The 5 hours over 40 are the same 5 hours already paid as daily overtime.
• –A 40-hour week does not mean no overtime. Four 9-hour days plus a 4-hour day comes to 40 hours and still owes 4 hours of daily overtime.
• –Double time is a daily trigger at hour 13 and a seventh-day trigger at hour 9 of that day. There is no weekly double-time trigger.

Quy tắc

Provide a 30-minute meal period before the end of hour 5 and a second before the end of hour 10, and each workday a required meal or rest period is not provided costs one additional hour of pay at the employee's regular rate of compensation.

Khi nào áp dụng — và khi nào không

• –The first meal period may be waived by mutual consent when the day's total work period is no more than 6 hours.
• –The second may be waived by mutual consent only when the total hours worked are no more than 12 and the first meal period was not waived.
• –Rest periods are 10 net minutes for every 4 hours worked or major fraction of it, and are not required when total daily work time is under three and one-half hours.
• –Wage Order 16 lifts its meal-period subsections for employees under a qualifying collective bargaining agreement that meets the order's wage and overtime conditions.

So sánh minh họa

Nhầm lẫn thường gặp

• –The premium is one hour per workday per category. Three missed rest breaks in one day still produce one rest premium.
• –The regular rate of compensation in section 226.7 is not the bare hourly figure. Ferra v. Loews Hollywood Hotel (2021) read it the way the overtime regular rate is read.
• –Letting the employee take the break later in the day does not undo the violation, and the premium is still owed.

Quy tắc

Pay the highest minimum wage that applies at the job location: the California rate is $16.90 an hour effective January 1, 2026, and a city or county ordinance that sets more takes its place.

Khi nào áp dụng — và khi nào không

• –Section 1197 makes the minimum fixed by any applicable state or local law the wage that must be paid, so the state figure is a floor and not a ceiling.
• –Paying a lower wage than the minimum so fixed is unlawful, whatever the employee agreed to.
• –Where a wage order imposes a split-shift premium, the extra hour is paid at the minimum wage and is added to the day's minimum, not calculated on the employee's own higher rate.
• –Wage Order 16, which covers on-site construction, drilling, logging and mining occupations, has no split-shift provision at all; its Minimum Wages section contains only subsections (A) and (B).

So sánh minh họa

Under a wage order that has one, split-shift amount owed = state minimum wage x (hours worked + 1) minus what the employee actually earned that day; if that is zero or less, nothing is owed.

Nhầm lẫn thường gặp

• –The split-shift hour is paid at the minimum wage, never at a higher personal rate, and a day already paid above the minimum for hours worked plus one hour can leave nothing owing.
• –Highest applicable rate means comparing the state and local figures and paying the larger. It is not an average, and it is not the federal figure.
• –Not every wage order carries every premium. Which order covers the occupation decides which premiums exist.

Quy tắc

On a public works contract above $1,000 you owe the general prevailing rate of per diem wages for work of a similar character in that locality, and you must be registered with the Department of Industrial Relations to bid on or perform the work.

Khi nào áp dụng — và khi nào không

• –Section 1771 excepts public works projects of one thousand dollars ($1,000) or less. Above that line the only further relief is conditional: §1771.5(a) lets an awarding body that the Director of Industrial Relations has approved to enforce a labor compliance program choose not to require prevailing wage on a project of $25,000 or less for construction, or $15,000 or less for alteration, demolition, repair or maintenance.
• –Section 1771 applies to work performed under contract, not to work a public agency carries out with its own forces, and it does apply to contracts let for maintenance work.
• –The registration requirement does not reach a public works project of $25,000 or less for construction, alteration, demolition, installation or repair, or of $15,000 or less for maintenance.
• –A CSLB licence and a DIR registration are separate obligations. Holding one does not supply the other.

So sánh minh họa

Nhầm lẫn thường gặp

• –The $25,000 and $15,000 figures do double duty. They are the DIR registration cutoffs in §1771.1(n), and they are also the ceiling for the conditional prevailing-wage election in §1771.5(a), which only an awarding body with an approved labor compliance program may make.
• –Prevailing wage is not the minimum wage. It is a craft-and-locality rate that runs well above the state floor.
• –A public agency doing the work with its own crews is outside section 1771, which reaches work performed under contract.

Quy tắc

An employer-ended job, a layoff included, pays all final wages immediately, while an employee who quits is paid on the last day if they gave 72 hours notice and within 72 hours if they did not.

Khi nào áp dụng — và khi nào không

• –Final wages include accrued unused vacation, which is treated as earned wages.
• –A willful failure to pay on time runs the wages on as a penalty at the same daily rate until paid, for not more than 30 days.
• –A handful of industries have their own deadlines, including 72 hours for a seasonal layoff in curing, canning or drying perishable food and 24 hours for certain oil-drilling discharges.
• –The deadline turns on who ended the job, not on how much notice anyone happened to give.

So sánh minh họa

Nhầm lẫn thường gặp

• –A layoff is not a resignation. The employer chose to end the job, so section 201 governs and the check is due on the spot.
• –The 30 days in section 203 caps the penalty. It is not a grace period before final pay becomes due.
• –The 72-hour rule belongs to quits. It never stretches a discharge or a layoff.

Quy tắc

Every payday hand the employee an itemized statement carrying the nine items section 226(a) lists, and produce payroll records for inspection or copying no later than 21 calendar days after the request.

Khi nào áp dụng — và khi nào không

• –The statement is furnished semimonthly or at the time of each payment of wages.
• –The employee identifier is the name plus only the last four digits of the social security number.
• –Both a current employee and a former employee may inspect or receive a copy, and the right does not end with the job.
• –Missing the 21-day window carries its own $750 penalty under section 226(f), separate from the statement penalties.

So sánh minh họa

Nhầm lẫn thường gặp

• –21 calendar days is the deadline to hand records over. It is not a retention period and it is not counted in business days.
• –The employer's name and address is required on the statement; the employee's address is not.
• –Only the last four digits of the social security number may appear. Printing the full number is a defect, not compliance.

Quy tắc

Keep payroll records showing daily hours worked and wages paid on file for not less than three years, deduct only what the law requires or the employee authorized in writing, and repay every necessary expense the job forces the employee to carry.

Khi nào áp dụng — và khi nào không

• –The records sit at a central location in the state or at the plants or establishments where the employees work.
• –A willful failure to keep them is a $500 civil penalty under section 1174.5.
• –Section 224 permits a deduction when state or federal law requires or empowers it, or when the employee expressly authorized it in writing to cover insurance premiums, hospital or medical dues, and similar items.
• –Section 2802 reaches expenditures incurred in direct consequence of the discharge of duties, which is why travel between jobsites during the workday is inside it and the trip from home to one fixed jobsite is not.

So sánh minh họa

Nhầm lẫn thường gặp

• –The $500 in section 1174.5 is a civil penalty for the record-keeping failure. It is not a per-employee, per-pay-period figure.
• –An employee paid at least twice the minimum wage may be asked to supply hand tools customarily used in the trade. Every other required tool and piece of equipment stays the employer's cost.
• –Reimbursement is not a deduction question. Money the worker fronted for the job comes back regardless of how the paycheck math looks.