Daniel Chammas: Regular Rate of Pay and Overtime in California

During his career as a lawyer, Daniel Chammas has worked with a number of clients who have encountered issues with employees that relate to their regular rate of pay and the overtime payments that they are due if they work beyond their contracted hours. While it is important to consult a legal professional if you believe your company may have issues with their current payment system, the following should offer a basic idea of the concept of the regular rate of pay and how it related to overtime.

Regular Rate of Pay

This is the compensation that an employee earns for the work they provide, as laid out in their employee contract. This could mean different things for different employees depending on how they are paid. It takes into account hourly earners, salaried workers, piecework earnings and work done by commission. The key thing to remember is that the regular rate of pay should never be less than the national minimum wage, regardless of how the employee is paid.

The hours that are used to calculate must not exceed the maximum regular hours, which is forty per week in the vast majority of cases. However, they can be calculated with lower numbers, if the employee does not work a forty hour week. It can also be altered based on the amount of days that the employee works during the week, plus there are considerations to be made if an employee is paid two different rates, so it is a good idea to speak to a legal professional if you hire people to work hours that don’t amount to five, eight-hour workdays per week.

Overtime

In California, the amount of overtime an employee is paid will equal one and a half times their r.r.p. per hour and includes every hour worked in a day beyond the standard eight and up to a maximum of twelve. If an employee works on all seven days in the established workweek, you will also have to pay them one and a half times their r.r.p. for the first eight hours of the seventh day.

Furthermore, any hours that the employee works in excess of twelve on a workday must be paid at double the regular rate of pay, as should any hours past the first eight on the seventh consecutive day of a work week.

Daniel Chammas would also like to make a final point that in California, this is applicable regardless of whether the overtime was authorized or not. The rules may also be different if the employee is salaried, so it is always wise to consult a legal professional if you are uncertain about overtime payments.

The Author writes articles for law and business field. He has also contributed to Wikipedia, Squidoo and Hubpages. His articles have been published in print as well as online magazines.