California Wage and Hour Lawyers

Helping Clients Seek Justice for Wage and Hour Violations

Recent studies have shown that employees in America lose thousands of dollars every year because of their employers’ wage theft. Federal, state, and local laws exist to protect you and your coworkers from wage and hour violations. If you have been taken advantage of or not paid what you are owed, you have the legal right to seek compensation. However, bringing a claim for violations of unpaid work or labor can be intimidating if done alone. That is when Justice Law Corporation can step in.

If you have been a victim of unpaid or underpaid wages, whether it be in regards to overtime, reimbursement for work expenses, off-the-clock work, prevailing wages, missed breaks, or any issue regarding compensation or working conditions, you may not know how to seek justice for these violations. It can be difficult to fight a large corporation that employs its own legal counsel. Most individuals aren’t familiar with the nuances of wage and hour disputes, making it challenging to pursue a successful lawsuit.

When you have your rights violated by your employer in any way, you deserve help from an employment lawyer with vast experience in employment law. At Justice Law Corporation, our knowledgeable and aggressive wage and hour lawyers in California are ready to fight for you.

Contact our legal team to learn more about how our California employment attorneys can recover compensation for your injustice.

What Types of Cases Do Wage and Hour Lawyers Handle?

Wage and hour laws regulate how employees are treated. When violations occur, the employee should be able to pursue justice without fear of employer retaliation. However, the fact is that hiring legal representation is sometimes necessary to get treated fairly. This means finding a wage and hour lawyer to represent you in your unpaid wage claim.

Some examples of wage and hour violations that a wage and hour lawyer would handle include:

Minimum wage violations – Employers who fail to pay the minimum wage may be subject to penalty by law. The employee may seek recovery for unpaid wages and other penalties.
Failure to pay overtime – If an employer fails to pay overtime according to law and if the employee is eligible for overtime, the victim may take legal action. A failure to properly calculate overtime is also against the law.
Failure to provide meal or rest breaks – Non-exempt hourly employees have a right to lunch breaks or a rest break during their shift. If the individual is not provided timely, uninterrupted, duty-free meal and rest breaks, the employer may be liable according to state laws.
Employee misclassification – One of the most common is classifying employees incorrectly as independent contractors or as salaried employees in order to avoid providing suitable benefits violates employment law.
Failure to reimburse – When employers fail to reimburse certain job-related expenses, such as travel expenses, cell phones, internet, office supplies, and tools, they can face wage and hour claims.
Failure to keep adequate records – Recordkeeping violations occur when the employer fails to keep records of hours worked, wages paid, overtime pay, and other critical information.
Improper calculation of wages – Improperly calculating overtime wages, bonuses, and incentives can cost you thousands of dollars in unpaid wages.

If you are experiencing any of the above, please contact our law firm right away. We have been representing employees for over a decade, and we will put our experience and knowledge to work for you.

What Are My Wage and Hour Rights?

While federal laws provide some basic protections to ensure that employees are paid fairly for their work, California laws provide substantially more protection in many areas. A California wage and hour attorney can explain the laws as they apply to your specific situation and review your best options for obtaining compensation and other forms of relief.

Wage and hour laws have been tailored to accomplish a number of goals for employees. Some laws are designed to ensure that workers receive a fair hourly rate, including additional compensation when they work extra hours beyond the standard 40-hour workweek. Other laws have been created to stop employers from forcing employees to work additional time that is not compensated. Many of the unfair labor practices prohibited by wage and hour laws are collectively referred to as “wage theft.”

Minimum Wage Provisions

The state, federal, and local minimum wage laws establish a bottom line for employers, requiring them to pay at least a certain amount per hour for work performed. There are special rules for certain types of employees in California, and there are also exceptions that enable certain employers to bypass the minimum wage requirements. When an employer falsely claims that they are not subject to minimum wage requirements or that the employer simply fails to comply with requirements, the team at Justice Law Corporation knows how to hold them accountable.

Employees who are subject to more than one minimum wage provision are entitled to be paid at whichever level is higher. Some cities and counties in California have established their own minimum wage, so it is important to consider local laws as well as state laws.

Because federal minimum wage laws have not been raised since 2009, the state and local minimum wage rates are considerably higher. As of 2025, federal minimum wage laws require employers to pay covered employees at least $7.25 per hour, while California law sets a minimum wage of $16.50. State minimum wage rates in California are indexed to account for inflation as measured by the consumer price index. However, even if the index decreases, the minimum wage cannot decrease.

On the local level, many cities and counties have adopted rates higher than the overall state minimum. For instance, the minimum wage set by San Francisco is $19.18 per hour, while the minimum wage established by Los Angeles is $17.87 per hour as of July 1, 2025.

Some employees in California are entitled to a higher minimum wage based on the type of job they hold, while others can be paid less for a variety of reasons. Workers who are considered “fast food employees” must be paid at least $20.00 per hour, and that rate could increase if the Fast Food Council determines that the rate should be raised. In addition, some health care workers are also entitled to receive a higher minimum wage that varies according to the type of facility that employs them.

Local regulations may also require employers to pay a higher minimum wage for workers employed by particular types of businesses. For example, workers in Los Angeles employed by a hotel with 60 or more rooms must be paid at least $21.01 per hour. What this all means is that a California wage and hour attorney needs to look closely at numerous regulations to determine whether an employer is complying with requirements and determine the most effective process to get compensation for workers when employers are not living up to obligations.

Overtime Requirements

Many employees in California are unaware that their employers should be paying them overtime rates for some of the hours they work. Employees who are covered by state or federal overtime requirements are entitled to receive one and a half times their regular pay rate for hours worked that exceed the standard eight-hour day or 40-hour workweek. If they work more than 12 hours in a day, then they should be paid double their usual rate for those excess hours. Moreover, if they work seven consecutive days in a row, overtime rules kick in on the seventh day. The first eight hours of that day are compensated at one and a half times the usual rate, and the hours after the 8th hour should be paid at double the usual rate.

One way employers avoid paying overtime rates—and a reason many employees don’t expect to receive overtime pay—is that federal laws and California laws contain a number of exemptions. When a worker is considered exempt from overtime requirements, the employer can require them to work an unlimited number of hours at their regular rate or base salary. Exempt employees include executives, professionals, and administrative employees, but many workers in “administrative” positions actually do not fit the exemption, and these employees should be receiving overtime pay.

To further complicate overtime rules, California law also creates exceptions or special rules about overtime pay for certain employees. In addition, federal laws such as those pertaining to drivers regulated by the U.S. Department of Transportation govern overtime requirements in some cases. A wage and hour attorney in California can determine whether you qualify for overtime and how much your employer should be required to compensate you for unpaid overtime in the past.

Other Forms of Wage Theft

Whether done intentionally or not, employers have developed numerous ways to deny employees some of the pay they have earned. They often violate requirements by:

Not paying for time when an employee is on a short break for a rest period
Not providing rest period breaks as required by law
Not providing meal breaks, but deducting time for meal breaks from the employee’s pay
Requiring employees to perform some tasks before they clock in or after they clock out
Failing to pay for time earned as vacation time or sick days
Confiscating tips earned by employees
Treating employees as independent contractors
Not paying a partial day’s wage to workers who report to work but are sent home

Many employees are not aware that these practices are against the law, or they don’t know how to enforce their rights. A knowledgeable California wage and hour attorney at Justice Law Corporation can help ensure that employees are paid fairly in the future and receive back pay for wages that were unlawfully withheld due to wage theft practices in the past.

What is a Class Action?

A class action is a lawsuit where a member or members of a group who have suffered similar violations collectively bring a lawsuit forward on behalf of that group. Class actions are an essential component of the American legal system and an excellent tool to achieve justice for large groups of people. They also advance public policy goals by serving as a sort of regulatory check on the behavior of large organizations that may otherwise suffer little consequences. Class actions are commonly used for various legal matters, including consumer protection, environmental issues, finance, and employment.

Typically, since the number of people affected is so numerous, it’s more efficient to reach a collective resolution. For example, if a company uses deceptive tactics to sell a product to a large number of consumers, each individual who was a victim of those deceptive tactics could be included in a class action against that company. Many of the people who were victims of those deceptive tactics may not even have been aware that a violation occurred.

Several elements have to be satisfied before a case can be certified as a class. These are numerosity, commonality, typicality, and adequacy. These elements mean that the class action must involve a sufficient number of people (numerosity), involve common factual issues or questions among the class members (commonality), and whether the class representative’s claims are typical or different from other class members (typicality), and whether the class representative is adequate to represent the class or they have any conflicts of interests (adequacy).

Once these elements are satisfied, the class representative must show that the questions of law or fact common to the class members will predominate over any questions only affecting individual members, making the class treatment an efficient way to resolve the comment question for all class members in a single case: Is the class action a superior method over individual action?

The Private Attorneys General Act

The Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), which has been called “California’s Hero Labor Law”, was crafted in 2003 to enforce California’s extensive workplace protection laws. A PAGA lawsuit, which is a representative action lawsuit similar to a class action lawsuit, is one of the most powerful tools that workers in California possess to address corporate wrongdoing. California has some of the strongest labor laws in the country. However, it’s too difficult and costly for the state of California to pursue all of the instances of workplace violations that occur. So, PAGA gives individuals the ability to act on behalf of the state to achieve justice for aggrieved workers through monetary penalties. A report published by the UCLA Labor Center in 2024 found that through PAGA, over $200 million dollars in penalties were collected in 2023 due to corporations violating California labor laws. More than 90% of these claims alleged wage theft. Further, PAGA actions outpaced by nearly three times the number of inspections the Bureau of Field Enforcement was able to conduct during this time period. Thus, PAGA lawsuits have been a more effective way to keep employers accountable in California.

While similar to class action lawsuits, PAGA lawsuits are not class actions. They are representative lawsuits where an employee steps in the shoes of the Attorney General – as a private attorney general – to bring claims on behalf of the State of California and the aggrieved employees. A PAGA representative does not have to satisfy the class action elements. However, PAGA lawsuits may only collect civil penalties as opposed to actual damages (unpaid wages). These penalties are then split, with 65% going to the State of California and 35% being shared among the aggrieved employees. Also, PAGA lawsuits have a more limited statute of limitations of one year versus four years in a typical employment class action.

What Cases Does Your Law Firm Handle?

Our legal team handles a wide range of cases. We are prepared to handle the needs of employees whose rights have been violated in any way.

Some specific forms of employment cases that we handle include:

Unpaid overtime – If you worked overtime or off-the-clock and were not compensated correctly, we can help.
Minimum wage violations – Our team of lawyers handles many forms of unpaid wages, including workers who are paid lower than minimum wage. We will evaluate whether your employer violated minimum wage laws and help you collect compensation.
Prevailing wages – All employees who work on public works projects must be paid a prevailing wage. Contractors and subcontractors can be fined up to $200 per day per worker who is paid less than the prevailing wage.
Independent contractors – Individuals who are incorrectly classified as independent contractors may be able to take legal action. We will also defend the legal rights of those who rightfully work as independent contractors.

A wage-and-hour attorney is one of your best allies in defeating unjust practices. However, if you wait too long, you could forfeit your right to legal action.

Call Justice Law Corporation today for helpful, caring lawyers who can achieve justice and advocate on your behalf. If your employer denies you minimum wage, rest breaks, overtime pay, or more, we will help stop the wage theft. Our lawyers will also seek justice on your behalf and protect others from being victimized by these illegal practices.

What Can I Do to Improve My Chances of a Successful Wage and Hour Claim?

Taking action following unfair treatment at work can be scary. However, there are certain actions you can take to protect yourself and get the best possible results from your legal suit.

Some ways you can improve your claim’s chances of success include:

Hiring a wage-and-hour lawyer to provide the legal counsel and representation you require
Keep track of crucial elements in your case, including missed wages, overtime worked, pay stubs, communication with your employer, and more
Acting quickly to avoid filing the claim outside the window provided by your state’s statute of limitations

Wage claims can be complicated and hyper-technical, making the process intimidating for those who do not work regularly in this legal field. You need a skilled attorney on your side who is familiar with the nuances of employment law. Contact the team at Justice Law Corporation today for wage-and-hour attorneys who can maximize your benefits and protect your rights.

Why Do I Need Your California Lawyers to Represent Me in My Wage and Hour Claim ?

If your employer failed to pay you for hours worked, did not provide overtime pay or accrued vacation time, or violated your rights in any manner, you may need to take legal action. Before moving forward with your case, it is highly recommended that you speak with a trusted legal professional who can advise you based on your unique situation.

Some advantages of hiring a wage and hour lawyer with our firm are:

Personalized advice based on decades of experience
Representation from an attorney with detailed knowledge of employment law
Creative solutions to solve your legal problems
Experienced negotiation tactics to settle your case outside of court

Mistakes are all too common when it comes to wages, benefits, overtime, rest breaks, and more. However, when your employer refuses to correct a mistake, or worse, continues paying you less than you deserve, you should consider taking legal action with the help of a knowledgeable wage and hour lawyer.

Unpaid wages lawyers like those at our law firm will ensure that you get the payment, vacation time, breaks, and other benefits you have a right to as an employee. Call now to learn more about how we can help.

FAQs About Wage and Hour Laws in California

Wage and hour laws are probably more complex in California than in any other state in the U.S. While these laws can provide excellent protections for employees in our state, these protections are useless if employers ignore them.

Here are some general answers to some of the questions we get most often about this complicated legal scheme. If you have questions about how the wage and hour requirements apply to your specific job situation, we urge you to contact us for a free discussion.

Is it Possible for an Employee to be Covered by Some Wage and Hour Requirements but Not Others?

It is quite common for a worker to be covered by one aspect of wage and hour laws in California and yet for that employee to be considered exempt from other requirements. It is important to look at the definitions of exempt employees in each particular regulation, as well as any exceptions that may apply. This is one reason it is so helpful to work with an experienced attorney if you believe your employer is not following all of the rules.

Are Independent Contractors Covered by Wage and Hour Laws?

When workers are classified as “independent contractors” rather than employees, the companies that hire them are not required to follow wage and hour rules, and the workers are responsible for paying an additional share of payroll taxes. Sometimes, companies misclassify their workers as independent contractors when those workers actually meet the state or federal standards to be considered employees. When this happens, a wage and hour lawyer can often recover amounts that employers should have submitted in payroll taxes and other amounts that these workers were denied because of their misclassification.

Should I Be Compensated for Work Expenses or Errands I Run for My Boss After Work?

Employers sometimes make employees feel like it is just part of the job to drop off bank deposits after work, pick up change before their shift, or run other errands for the boss. While employers can ask employees to undertake these types of tasks, employers need to compensate workers for every minute they spend doing the task, which can really add up over time. Additionally, employers should be compensating employees for work-related expenses, such as gas used to run errands or supplies purchased for the office.

Is My Employer Allowed to Delay My Paycheck?

California has strict laws requiring workers to be paid promptly, and when an employer fails to comply with those rules, the worker may be entitled to receive specific late penalty amounts. Generally, employers are required to pay employees at least twice each month, with payments within 10 days after the end of the pay period.

What Should I Do If I Think I Might Be a Victim of Wage Theft?

It is important for your future and the future of other workers to take action to call attention to wage and hour violations. If you believe the violation may be unintentional and you don’t want to cause trouble for your employer, a California wage and hour attorney at Justice Law Corporation may be able to negotiate a settlement that provides fair compensation for employees and ensures that appropriate standards will be followed in the future.

In other situations, it may be necessary to file a lawsuit to obtain full compensation for past losses and compliance with requirements in the future. When you arrange a free consultation with an attorney, you can discuss the options that make the most sense in your situation.

And don’t worry—your employer is not allowed to fire you or take any negative action in retaliation when you act to enforce your rights under wage and hour laws.

Should You Hire Our Wage and Hour Lawyers in California?

Employers have a duty to provide employees with a safe work environment, payment according to law, overtime pay, adequate breaks throughout the day, and the ability to seek compensation without fear of employer retaliation.

If your employer fails to provide the above or another benefit, you may be eligible for compensation. Our team of lawyers is proud to help victims of wage and hour violations seek justice and get the hourly rate they deserve.

When you need legal help to dispute a wage and hour issue, you can trust us to uncover the truth about what happened and defend your rights. We will communicate effectively with you throughout the process, so you know what to expect. Our lawyers listen carefully and will address your concerns, so you feel heard and valued.

Reach out to Justice Law Corporation immediately for the help you need. We operate on a contingency fee basis, so you won’t pay a thing unless we win your case.

Call 818-230-7502 to schedule your complimentary case evaluation today!