Already set to decide the troublesome meal period issue (whether employers must “ensure” or “provide” employee meal periods) in Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court and Brinkley v. Public Storage, Inc., the California Supreme Court has just agreed to review two other cases involving wage and hour issues.
In Pineda v. Bank of America, the court will decide whether California employees have one year, three years, or four years to file a claim for waiting time penalties. Under current California law, employees who are terminated must be paid all wages and benefits on the last day they work, and quitting employees must be paid within 72 hours of their last day. For each day that the employee must wait for a final paycheck, a waiting time penalty (the equivalent of 8 hours of pay) is imposed, up to a cap of 30 days.
The HR Management & Compliance Report: How To Comply with California Wage & Hour Law, explains everything you need to know to stay in compliance with the state’s complex and ever-changing rules, laws, and regulations in this area. Coverage on bonuses, meal and rest breaks, overtime, alternative workweeks, final paychecks, and more.
The court will also review Lu v. Hawaiian Gardens Casino, deciding whether or not the California Labor Code gives employees the right to sue for “tip-pooling” violations. Tips can be shared (“pooled”) among all employees who are in the direct chain of service to the customer leaving a tip (for example, among waiters, buspersons, and bartenders). However, California law prohibits owners, supervisors or managers from receiving any part of a gratuity left by a customer. The court will determine whether employees themselves can file a lawsuit for violations, or instead must go through the Labor Commissioner to recover illegally pooled tips.
We will tell you what the court decides in all of these cases in future issues of the California Employer Advisor.