California overtime laws are among the most complex laws in the labor and employment law sphere. Employers are required to juggle various complicated overtime exemptions, as well as keep track of employee hours to make sure they don’t run afoul of any overtime laws. A recent case has added a new wrinkle to California’s overtime laws.
In a nutshell, California overtime laws apply to all non-exempt employees. Generally speaking, non-exempt employees working more than 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week are entitled to receive overtime pay. But what about employees who only occasionally work in California? In the case of Sullivan v. Oracle Corporation, the California Supreme Court tackled just this issue. The plaintiffs in the Sullivan case were employees that periodically worked in California. They wanted California overtime law to apply during any full day in which they worked in California.
The California Supreme Court sided with the plaintiffs, holding that when employees visit from other states, California overtime law applies: “To exclude nonresidents from the overtime laws’ protection would tend to defeat their purpose by encouraging employers to import unprotected workers from other states. Nothing in the language or history of the relevant statutes suggests the Legislature ever contemplated such a result.”
Yet the court was also careful to note that its holding was limited to just overtime, not necessarily to other wage and hour laws:
While we conclude [our] analysis does require us to apply California’s overtime law to…work performed here by nonresidents, one cannot necessarily assume the same result…for any other aspect of wage law. California…has expressed a strong interest in governing overtime compensation for work performed in California. In contrast, California’s interest in the content of an out-of-state business’s pay stubs, or the treatment of its employees’ vacation time, for example, may or may not be sufficient to justify choosing California law over the conflicting law of the employer’s home state. No such question is before us.”
In essence, the court punted on the non-overtime issues. Because the issue of whether to apply all California wage and hour law to visiting employees was not before the court, the court chose to simply wait until that specific issue was before them.
So listen up companies that employ workers that work periodically in California – California overtime law applies whenever these employees work in California. Stay tuned for whether all California wage and hour laws apply as well.
