What to Do When Not Being Paid for Work or Overtime

When you are not being paid for work performed or overtime wages, your employee rights are being violated. In California, wage theft occurs more often in particular industries: construction, health care, hospitality, restaurants, agriculture, garment manufacturing, janitorial, guard and security services.

Lawyers say that when you're not being paid for your work, the most important thing to do is document everything. Log all instances of being unpaid or underpaid wages with the date and time and work performed, as soon as they occur. The more evidence you can give to lawyers of instances of unpaid wages, the more compensation a lawyer will be able to get for you. If other employees are also cheated out of their wages, be sure to tell your attorney, as a class action lawsuit can be very strong.

Not being paid for work performed commonly violates one of these:

• All employees must be paid minimum wage, at the very least, regardless of immigration status (e.g. illegal or legal). At the time of this writing, minimum wage is $9.00 an hour in California. Minimum wage, in California, will increase to $10.00 an hour on January 1, 2016.
• Employers are required to pay their workers overtime when any time over 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week is performed at a rate of one and a half times the wage per hour for time worked over 8 hours a day and two times the wage per hour for time worked over 12 hours a day.
• Time spent traveling as part of a work activity must be paid and considered as hours worked, such as travel between job sites. Employers must also reimburse workers of expenses incurred during this time, such as payment of gas used or parking fees.
• Breaks required at the workplace must be paid. Employees should be allowed to leave the place of employment for rest and meal breaks. If the employee is not permitted to leave the workplace, during a break, the employer must pay for their time.
• Employees must be paid for work "suffered or permitted" even if the employer does not specifically authorize the work. If the employer knows or has good reason to believe that the employee is continuing to work then that time must be considered as time worked. This commonly occurs when the employee takes home work to perform and the manager knows the employee is taking work home or the employee is working past their normal working hours. Even though the time worked was unscheduled, the employee was "suffered and permitted" to work and the manager was aware of it.
• Workers required to remain on-call and their lives suffer because of it, such as by restriction of activities or geographic location, must be paid for the hours worked while on-call. In other words, if an employee's freedom was constrained  by being on-call, the employee must be paid for time worked at his regular wage per hour or overtime rate, if the hours worked on-call are calculated to fall in the range of overtime work.

Lawyers say there are many more ways workers can be cheated out of their wages or hours worked. Thus, it is always best to speak to an attorney with expertise in employment and civil rights laws, such as the lawyers from LibertyBell Law Group.

Wage theft occurs more to illegal aliens and undocumented immigrants because many do not know their civil and employee rights. Civil attorneys in California emphasize that everyone is entitled to receive at least minimum wage and be paid for all time worked and the employee's immigration status does not matter. The courts and judges do not care about the immigration status of an employee when a labor complaint or employment lawsuit has been filed. It is illegal for a business being sued or investigated for a labor complaint to bring up immigration status or report that issue to law enforcement or government agency.

Employment law lawyers from LibertyBell Law Group know how to protect your rights and get you the most compensation for the time you have worked and not been paid and damages suffered. Our lawyers in California have expertise in employment law, lawsuits and settlements. Most of the time, our attorneys are able to get clients the best settlements without even going to trial. Though, if necessary, our employment law lawyers will not hesitate to file a lawsuit to get you the compensation and justice you deserve.

If you believe you have not been paid for work you did, overtime or have had any of your employee rights violated, call LibertyBell Law Group attorneys now at 855-200-ATTY (855-200-2889).

LibertyBell Law Group attorneys have won many awards and are well-known for their expertise in civil law. The attorneys also have top client reviews as they are dedicated to giving clients the best legal representation. They are the Newsweek 2015 Legal Superstars.