San Francisco Overtime Pay Lawyer

Overtime Pay Claims

Are you an hourly worker who is being forced to work long hours without being paid for overtime? Are you a salaried employee who thinks you have been misclassified as an exempt employee? Or have you been misclassified as an independent contractor when you are really performing as an employee?

At Rukin Hyland & Riggin LLP, our attorneys have recovered tens of millions of dollars in unpaid overtime and other wages on behalf of employees in California and nationwide in class action litigation and individual claims or lawsuits.

California Overtime Laws

California’s overtime laws are generally more favorable for employees than federal laws or the laws of other states. In addition to being entitled to overtime pay (at a rate of one-and-one-half times the normal pay rate or “time and a half”) after working eight hours per day or forty hours per week, California workers are entitled to double-time pay after twelve hours per day or after eight hours on the seventh workday in a week.

Misclassification of Employees as Exempt

Under California and federal law, employees are generally entitled to overtime pay unless they qualify as exempt from overtime under a few narrow exemptions for “white collar” employees and commissioned salespersons. The so-called “white collar” exemptions apply only to certain managerial, administrative, and professional employees who exercise substantial discretion and independent judgment in the performance of their jobs.

Employers may classify certain employees as exempt from overtime pay — when in fact they should be classified as non-exempt employees entitled to overtime pay. For example, retailers have classified their California “managers” and “assistant sales managers” as exempt from overtime, even though these managers spend most of their time performing the same work as the hourly employees they supervise and are legally entitled to overtime pay. Other employees who are sometimes misclassified as exempt include:

Information technology workers
Computer programmers, software engineers, and other computer-related positions
Marketing and other support or back-office employees
Customer service and call center employees
Sales employees
Project management personnel who do not actually manager people
On-call workers such as firefighters, nurses, emergency medical technicians, ambulance drivers, and other first responders

Read about Peter Rukin discussing the settlement of a class action overtime case involving software engineers and computer professionals who were improperly classified as exempt employees.

“Off-The-Clock” Work

Sometimes, an employer may properly classify its workers as entitled to overtime, but unlawfully direct or permit those workers to work unreported overtime “off-the-clock.” For example, in a highly publicized case involving a “big box” retailer, hourly employees had been assigned a certain number of duties that had to be completed within their 8-hour shift. If the duties could not be completed in that period, employees were told that they had to finish on their own time.

California law prohibits discrimination or retaliation against an employee who files a complaint about improper misclassification of exempt employees or unpaid overtime pay.