California gives workers more than any other state. Overtime after eight hours in a day. Double time after twelve. Premium pay on the seventh straight day. An exempt salary floor more than twice the federal one. A four-year reach-back when the case is pleaded right. We represent employees. Not employers. Ever.
Section 510 opens with eight words that decide most California overtime cases: “Eight hours of labor constitutes a day’s work.” Work over eight hours in a day, over 40 in a week, and the first eight on a seventh consecutive workday are paid at one and one-half times your regular rate. Work over 12 hours in a day, and anything past eight on that seventh day, is paid at double. The main exception is a validly adopted alternative workweek schedule, often adopted improperly.1
The statewide minimum wage rose to $16.90 an hour on January 1, 2026, and dozens of cities and counties set higher local rates that control where they apply.3 Covered fast food restaurant employees are entitled to at least $20.00 an hour.4 Health care workers have their own schedule: from July 1, 2026 through June 30, 2027, covered facilities pay $25.00 at large systems, dialysis clinics and large county facilities; $23.00 at most other covered facilities; $22.00 at community, rural and urgent care clinics; and $19.28 at high governmental payor mix hospitals, rural independent facilities and small county facilities.5 Your overtime rate is built on your regular rate of pay, which includes most nondiscretionary bonuses and commissions.
Being salaried proves nothing. California requires two bars cleared, not one. The employee must be “primarily engaged in the duties that meet the test of the exemption,” must “customarily and regularly exercise discretion and independent judgment in performing those duties,” and must earn “a monthly salary equivalent to no less than two times the state minimum wage for full-time employment.”6 For 2026 that is $70,304 a year — roughly double the federal $684 per week.7
So a title does not do it. Neither does a salary. We see the same pattern in managed care and human services: a case manager or utilization review nurse applying someone else's criteria to someone else's file, called exempt because the pay is salaried. California also writes a specific rule for nurses: a registered nurse engaged in the practice of nursing is not exempt unless she individually meets the executive or administrative test.6 If you apply a guideline rather than write one, read our page on the administrative exemption.
You are owed an unpaid 30-minute meal period before the end of your fifth hour, and a second one past ten hours.8 When an employer fails to provide a required meal, rest or recovery period, it “shall pay the employee one additional hour of pay at the employee’s regular rate of compensation for each workday” the period was not provided.9 That premium is not a penalty. The California Supreme Court held that “missed-break premium pay is indeed wages subject to the Labor Code’s timely payment and reporting requirements,” so unpaid premiums also drive final-pay and pay-stub claims.10
If an employer willfully fails to pay everything owed when you leave, your wages “continue as a penalty” at the same daily rate for up to 30 days.11 A pay stub that hides what you earned carries the greater of actual damages or $50 for the first pay period and $100 for each later one, capped at $4,000, plus costs and fees.12 One caution: the Court has held that an employer's objectively reasonable, good-faith belief that its wage statements complied defeats those penalties, so the pay-stub claim is the add-on, not the engine.13 And unlike federal law, California does not double unpaid overtime — the liquidated-damages statute says “[n]othing in this subdivision shall be construed to authorize the recovery of liquidated damages for failure to pay overtime compensation.”14 The leverage here comes from daily overtime, double time, break premiums and the long lookback.
The 2024 amendments rewrote the Private Attorneys General Act. Aggrieved employees now receive 35 percent of recovered penalties rather than 25. The default penalty is $100 per employee per pay period, rising to $200 where the employer has a prior finding against it or acted maliciously, fraudulently or oppressively, and dropping to $50 for an isolated, nonrecurring event. An employer that took all reasonable steps to comply before your notice can cap penalties at 15 percent; one that does so within 60 days after notice can cap them at 30 percent. Standing tightened: an “aggrieved employee” is now someone who “personally suffered each of the violations alleged.” Courts may also limit the evidence or the scope of a claim to keep it triable.15 Before suing you must file written notice online with the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, serve the employer by certified mail, pay a $75 fee, and wait out the agency's 65-day window.16
Labor Code claims run three years. Adding an Unfair Competition Law claim reaches back four, because the Supreme Court held that “[a]n order that earned wages be paid is therefore a restitutionary remedy authorized by the UCL.”17 That four-year window covers unpaid wages. It does not cover waiting-time penalties, which the Court has held are not UCL restitution.18 PAGA penalties run one year.
You can file a wage claim with the Labor Commissioner's Office (DLSE), a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor, or a lawsuit. No agency filing is required first on Labor Code claims; PAGA is the exception.16 California also bars discharging, demoting or disciplining you for complaining that you are owed wages, filing with the Labor Commissioner, or giving a PAGA notice.19 If the write-up followed the complaint, that is a second claim, not a coincidence.
Jack Siegel has filed more than 100 federal overtime lawsuits in 27 federal courts, earned 50 or more class and collective certifications, and recovered more than $100 million for workers, as lead counsel on the firm's cases. The firm concentrates in overtime and misclassification litigation for workers and brings these cases in federal courts nationwide. We represent employees only, never employers, and you do not need a lawyer sitting in California to bring a California claim. Results are listed here.
Yes. Double time is owed for hours over 12 in a workday, and for hours over eight on the seventh consecutive day worked in a workweek.1
Yes. California's 2026 exempt salary floor is $70,304 a year. Below that figure you cannot be exempt as an executive, administrative or professional employee no matter what your duties are.7
They are worth one extra hour of pay at your regular rate of compensation for each workday a required meal, rest or recovery period was not provided — and that premium counts as wages.9,10
Often, yes. Employees now keep 35 percent of penalties instead of 25. But standing is narrower, employers have new ways to cap exposure, and the notice process is strict, so the case has to be built for it from day one.15,16
Every consultation is free and confidential, and we take overtime cases on contingency — we advance the costs of the case, those costs are repaid out of any recovery, and if we do not recover you owe us nothing: no attorney's fee and no costs. Call (214) 790-4454, email [email protected], or request a case review. Siegel Law Group PLLC, Austin, Texas. This page is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
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