A standard workday in the United States is typically eight hours long. If an employee works five days in a week, that gives them a 40-hour week.
While most employees know that they deserve overtime pay for exceeding 40 hours during the week, is the same true if you break eight hours in one day?
Long days and extra hours deserve extra wages
Under California law, you do deserve overtime pay when you exceed eight hours in one day. That pay should be 1.5 times the rate you normally earn. If you make $20 per hour, for instance, your overtime pay would be $30 per hour. This is true even if you don’t break 40 hours in the week. If, for instance, you work 10 hours per day for three days, that’s only a total of 30 hours for the week. You are still due for six hours of overtime pay, however, at 1.5 your normal pay rate.
If you work more than 12 hours in a single work period, you are due double your normal rate of pay for those hours. Thus, if you work 16 hours to fill a big order, you would be due your regular rate of pay for eight hours, time-and-a-half for the next four and double your rate of pay for the last four.
Are you being paid properly?
As you can imagine, employees sometimes run into issues where employers want extra labor but do not want to pay the extra wages. This could be illegal wage theft, and you must know what legal options you have. An attorney can help you better understand your wage rights.
