California Wage and Hour disputes

Overtime Laws, Wages, Salaries, and Work Hours

Employee classification and wage and hour disputes are a growing concern in California. Employment laws require that each employee to be classified as "exempt" or "nonexempt," and that nonexempt employees receive additional compensation for overtime hours worked.

The exact criteria for exempt and nonexempt employees can be confusing, however, and employees sometimes misclassify workers as salaried (exempt) because of the highly skilled or sensitive nature of their work, although they have no real supervisory or managerial purpose.

Administrative assistants and other office employees, for example, have found themselves working a great number of additional hours without additional compensation because of this confusion.

When conflicts arise regarding overtime pay, travel time, training time, the use of compensatory time off, or other wage and hours issues, the California employment law attorneys of Collins & Bellenghi, LLP, offer informed guidance to both employers and employees.

Contact our Newport Beach law office to schedule a consultation if your business has questions regarding overtime law compliance or if you are engaged in a dispute regarding wage and hour or overtime laws.

Compliance Consultations and Trial Representation

Employees and employers disagree about what constitutes overtime and how overtime is paid. For example:

• In an attempt to reduce overtime costs, some companies in the retail industry chose to define the work to be performed during an employee's shift and to require that the employee perform that work, without pay, if they had not accomplished it before their regular work shift ended.
• In other situations, employees were compensated for overtime with compensatory time off in the future when this was not authorized.

At Collins & Bellenghi, we help employers and employees understand their rights and responsibilities under federal and California overtime laws. Our employment law attorneys provide compliance consultation to prevent violations of the Wage and Hours Act.

When a conflict has already arisen, our attorneys possess the judgment and experience to know when a conflict can be resolved through negotiation, mediation, or arbitration, or when a lawsuit is the unavoidable response. We are skilled trial attorneys who have taken more than 60 employment law cases to trial. We are prepared to provide aggressive, thorough trial representation.

Contact an employment law attorney at Collins & Bellenghi to discuss your wage and hour or overtime compliance concerns.

Southern California Overtime Laws Attorney / Orange County Wage and Hours Act Lawyer