Source: https://www.bayareaemploymentlawyerblog.com/category/wage-hour-law/
Timestamp: 2019-04-24 22:06:46+00:00

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The tension between an employee’s simple right to receive his wages for work he performed and the U.S. Supreme Court’s favoritism towards employers, is almost palpable in the tortured history of Sonic-Calabasas A, Inc. v. Moreno (Sonic II) ___ Ca.4th ___ (Oct. 17, 2013).
Here the employer imposed an arbitration agreement upon Mr. Moreno. When Mr. Moreno filed a simple Labor Commission claim to collect his vacation pay, the employer refused to attend the Labor Commission (Berman) hearing, and instead moved to arbitrate the claim. I suspect the move was a ploy to make it so expensive and time consuming for poor Mr. Moreno to collect what wasn’t a large amount of money to begin with, that he’d just give up. Lucky for Mr. Moreno, the Labor Commissioner realized the negative implications for all employees just trying to get paid for the work they do, if they can’t go to the Labor Commission.
In 2011 the California Supreme Court held that Mr. Moreno was entitled to his Labor Commission hearing, and that if the employer was dissatisfied with the results of the Berman hearing, it could then move to arbitrate. This was a fairly benign and logical holding.
The California Supreme Court has laid clear, after much confusion, the proper standard by which employers must provide their employees with meal periods, imposing an affirmative burden to completely relieve their employees from duty so that the employees may take full, thirty-minute, uninterrupted meal periods. If the employer fails to meet its obligation to do so, the damaged employee is eligible for a meal period premium of an hour’s worth of wages. In addition, the Court has clarified the standard by which meal period and rest break class actions may be certified and laid forth the appropriate standard for the timing of meal and rest periods.
In Brinker, the Court points out that, if an employee works five or more hours in a shift, the employer must do one of three things: (1) afford the employee an off duty meal period; (2) reach a voluntary agreement with an employee on a meal period waiver if one hour or less will end the shift; or (3) obtain written agreement to an on-duty meal period if circumstances permit. If it does none of the three, it is liable for premium pay.
In addition, the Court makes it clear that employers may not skirt their obligations, emphasizing that “an employer may not undermine a formal policy of providing meal breaks by pressuring employees to perform their duties in ways that omit breaks.” The only steps an employer need not take are to “police” breaks and affirmatively ensure that no work is done.
I’m not so sure why so much attention has been paid to Sullivan v. Oracle, other than the case has been up and down and all around the court system. See, e.g., Sullivan v. Oracle, 51 Cal.4th 1191 (2011); Sullivan v. Oracle, 662 F.3d 1265 (9th Cir. 2011). The recent holdings (by the Ninth Circuit and California Supreme Court) that – if you work in the great State of California – you are entitled to the protections of California law including overtime and the prohibition against unfair business practices, seems rather ho-hum when you think about it.
I’m not sure what Oracle was thinking when it invited employees from other states to enjoy the sunshine in California, but then left them out in the cold when it came to the basic rights of our overtime law while working on our turf. If the courts permitted that type of conduct, wouldn’t we just be encouraging employers to import cheap labor from Montana and Utah to do our work here in California? Talk about creating sweatshops right here in the golden state.
Let’s look at Oracle’s bold practices and inability to learn a lesson. Year after year, Oracle hired “instructors” to train customers on its products. Some of these instructors lived and worked in California; some lived and worked in other states; and some lived in other states but worked part of the time in California. Oracle classified these employees as “teachers,” to make sure that these folks were exempt from overtime laws. Voila -employees worked overtime for no extra pay.
The conservative US Supreme Court’s activist agenda is in full throttle in the mandatory arbitration arena. In the AT&T v. Concepcion case (see prior blog of July 6, 2011), the US Supreme Court planted its thumb squarely on the employer’s side of the scales of justice by overturning past law and holding that there is no per se invalidation of class action arbitration provisions (Concepcion is a consumer class action case). Now the US Supreme Court apparently wishes to tip the scales at the opposite end of the spectrum: by applying this class action holding to individual Berman hearings brought by California workers for the payment of wages. The US Supreme Court has reached out and vacated (as well as remanded) the California Supreme Court’s holding in Sonic-Calabasas v. Moreno (2011) 51 Cal.4th 659. Why can’t the US Supreme Court stay out of our backyard?
The holding which the US Supreme Court vacated was quite modest. It simply upheld an employee’s right to a “Berman hearing” before the California Labor Commissioner, pursuant to California Labor Code, section 98, for the payment of unpaid wages. Berman hearings are a streamlined administrative procedure for employees to recover unpaid wages–including overtime, meal and rest period pay, and waiting time penalties–without having to go to court, allowing many employees who cannot afford a lawyer the ability to stand up for their workplace rights. The right to a Berman hearing protected by the California Supreme Court in Sonic-Calabasas was limited to the first instance only; the California Supreme Court permitted the employer to enforce a mandatory arbitration of the employee’s next step appeal, which would have otherwise taken place in the superior court.
The US Supreme Court vacated this opinion in light of Concepcion. See, Sonic-Calabasas, Inc. v Moreno (October 31, 2011) No. 10-1450. Does the US Supreme Court really believe that this minor right to an administrative hearing in the first instance should be wiped out? Does it really believe that an employer has a right to hijack a benign administrative process to entitle an employee to obtain his or her basic wages?

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