Overtime and the Salaried Employee

Ask yourself or your friend or any number of friends whether or not salaried employee's are entitled to overtime pay if they work longer than an eight hour day and the almost unanimous response is no.  Somehow this so called common knowledge has permeated through society so even high school students have heard of this concept and some may even believe it to be true.

Thankfully this common knowledge is incorrect in many instances.  California (Links to CA Dept of Industrial Relations) explicitly defines a work week at 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week, if either of these thresholds is crossed then California mandates they be paid at 1.5x their wage.  I believe this is one reason why many people think salaried employees are not entitled to overtime pay they do not think a salary is compatible with the idea of time and a half pay rate.

However, converting a salary to an hourly pay rate is rather simple. 

1. Determine the weekly rate:  Divide the salary by number of weeks worked (Generally 52 for a full year).
2. Now you take that number and divide it by 40 this will give you your regular rate of pay 

Example:  Employee is salaried at $36,000 and works for simplicity's sake 50 hours a week for 52 weeks.

1. 36000 / 52 =  692
2. 692 / 40 = 17  Meaning this employees average rate of pay is $17 an hour.
3. 10 hours a week of overtime x 52 weeks = 520 hours at 25.50 per hour = $13,260 in unpaid overtime.  (This is a large amount of overtime that is very consistent resulting in a high number used for simplicity's sake your own situation would of course be different).

The bad news is there are some exemptions, the good news is that they are generally construed against the employer not the employee though I suggest contacting an attorney to review your situation if you feel you are being unfairly compensated.  Real situations are more complicated than the simple one I have illustrated here.

I hope this helps to educate people about the facts surrounding the rights of salaried employees in California.

California Privacy Law Update for Mobile Application Creators

If you missed it last October, California Attorney General Kamala Harris sent threatening letters to approximately 100 mobile app developers who were not in compliance with California privacy laws. These laws require that apps which record consumer information disclose to the end-user exactly what information is being recorded, how that information is used, and whom it is being shared with.

Generally speaking, the Attorney General’s main concern about mobile products stems from their use on small screen – specifically, a lengthy disclosure would amount to a large wall of text that very few users would actually read in their race for the accept button to actually use the application.

On January 10, the Attorney General gave some clarification on how mobile developers can bring their products in line with these requirements. The Attorney General recommends that mobile developers give users access to this privacy information in the form of pop-ups or icons. Specifically, she wants something more conspicuous than a wall of text.

If you have a mobile application that a single user in California takes advantage of and you do not have conspicuous disclosure of how you use any information you collect from users, you are in violation of California law.  And we recommend you work quickly and diligently to correct that error and bring yourself into compliance with the law.

The Attorney General has already filed the first lawsuit for violating this law against Delta Airlines for their mobile app “Fly Delta,” which the Attorney General claims has lacked a conspicuous privacy policy since 2010.

Welcome!

Greetings and salutations, everyone. Welcome to the law blog of Pitchford – Montgomery. We are two San Francisco Attorneys that serve the greater Bay Area in a wide range of matters.

We are starting this blog to answer some of the common questions people have about the justice system and to keep the Bay Area apprised of interesting developments in the law.

We hope that you will enjoy our posts, and hopefully learn something in the process.