Most executives operate on a comfortable assumption: the company is the employer, so the company bears the wage and hour liability. Form the entity correctly, keep your corporate housekeeping in order, and your personal assets stay out of the line of fire. In California, that assumption is wrong. Labor Code section 558.1 allows a plaintiff…

Back in February, we covered the five key provisions of the sweeping PAGA regulations proposed by California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA). Five months later, those regulations are still not final—but they are moving, and this week the state signaled it has no intention of backing down. At a gathering of employment lawyers…

Most California employers think about their time and attendance records in only one context: the day a plaintiff’s lawyer subpoenas them. By then, the records are working against you — every late meal punch, every missing premium, every off-the-clock minute becomes a line item in someone else’s damages model. But the same data that creates…

California employers have extensive obligations under the Labor Code to create and maintain accurate time records and pay stubs. The Labor Code itself doesn’t prescribe a specific format or technology, but the way employers handle these records has only grown more important — particularly after the 2024 Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) reform, which ties…

California employers face one of the most complex and actively enforced wage-and-hour landscapes in the country, and most of that complexity gets triggered the moment a schedule is built. Daily overtime, meal and rest break timing, premium pay obligations, split shifts, reporting time pay, and PAGA exposure all flow from how shifts are scheduled and…