©2023 Seyfarth Shaw LLP www.seyfarth.com 2023 Cal-Peculiarities | 197 7. Wage and Hour Laws Federal wage and hour law stems from a 1938 federal statute, the Fair Labor Standards Act—enforced by the Wage Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor. California has a far more extensive regulation of wages and working conditions, which reflects several sources: the IWC Wage Orders, the Labor Code, judicial decisions, and DLSE interpretations. The FLSA does not preempt state law. Accordingly, an employer who is subject to both federal and California wage and hour law must comply with whichever law is the more onerous.1 And the more onerous version is almost always the California version. Thus, the California Supreme Court has repeatedly cited the “recognized principle that state law may provide employees greater protection than the FLSA.”2 For example, California wage and hour law, unlike federal law: imposes a higher and ever-increasing minimum wage (see § 7.2), requires that the minimum wage be paid separately for each hour of work, without regard to wage averaging (see § 7.2), treats any time under the control of the employer as hours worked (workweek § 7.3), requires payment for travel time by nonexempt employees even if it occurs beyond normal working hours (see § 7.3), requires reporting-for-duty pay (§ 7.3), requires overtime premium pay in many situations beyond the federal standard of work in excess of 40 hours in a workweek—including time and one-half for work in excess of eight hours a day and on the seventh consecutive day in a workweek, and double-time for work in excess of 12 hours a day and work in excess of eight hours and on the seventh consecutive day in a workweek (see § 7.4), forbids use of the fluctuating-workweek method to compute the regular rate for salaried nonexempt workers (see § 7.4), requires employers to pay wages upon termination of employment, or suffer large “waiting time” penalties (§ 7.5), imposes salary and duties criteria, for various exemptions, more onerous than those imposed by federal law (see § 7.6), requires that wage and hour exemptions be narrowly construed, as opposed to having them receive simply a fair reading (see § 7.6), requires meal, rest, and recovery breaks (see §§ 7.8, 7.9), requires an extra hour of pay for each daily failure to provide a meal break (see § 7.10),
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