Employee Rights in California: A Comprehensive Guide

Discover essential employee rights in California, including privacy, fair compensation, protection from discrimination, and workplace safety laws. Learn about wrongful termination, meal breaks, overtime pay, and legal steps to protect your employment rights.

By Brad Nakase, Attorney

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Have a quick question? We answered nearly 2000 FAQs.

Table of Contents

1. An Overview of Your Essential Employee Rights

2. Is There More Than One Form of Discrimination in the Workplace?

3. How do you define an independent contractor?

4. Who Are the Exempt Employees?

5. How Much Is the California Minimum Wage?

6. Do I have the right to overtime pay?

7. Do Companies Have to Provide Meal Breaks?

8. Workplace Sexual Harassment

9. Preventing Workplace Retaliation

10. What Does “Wrongful Termination” Mean?

11. What Steps Are Available to You?

An Overview of Your Essential Employee Rights

Employment law is the set of rules that tells a boss and an employee what their rights and duties are. Anyone seeking employment, whether they are now employed or not, or who has ever worked for an employer, is subject to employment law. Employee rights are at the heart of many court cases involving businesses of all sizes, whether mega-corp or corner shop.

Gaining a solid grasp of employment law requires dedication and expertise in the field. These rules are always changing in California. Everyone involved in a work relationship, from employers to job applicants, would do well to familiarize themselves with employee rights and employer responsibilities.

A few of the most essential protections afforded to workers in California are as follows:

Privacy: Employees should be able to reasonably expect some level of privacy while on the job. In certain cases, this may involve private phone conversations or even specific personal belongings.
Safety in the workplace: Employees have a right to an environment free from hazards that could inflict harm.
Fair compensation: Workers have a right to receive just compensation for the work they complete. Some examples of this are:

-Overtime pay

-Minimum wage

-Violations of wage and hour laws

Protection from abuse and discrimination: Workers should be able to go to work without being harassed or attacked in any way. This may encompass:

-Sexual harassment

-Discrimination based on nationality, religion, or race

-Bias based on gender and sex

-Discrimination based on age

-Discrimination based on disability

Retaliation in the Workplace: The prohibition against facing reprisals for reporting an employer.
Lunch Breaks: All non-exempt employees who work more than five hours a day are expected to take a thirty-minute lunch break.
FMLA: Read up on your FMLA (family and medical leave) protections.
Sick leave: In California, full-time employees are entitled to three 24-hour workdays of paid sick leave every twelve months.
Wrongful termination protection: An employer may be breaking the law if they fire an employee in violation of an employment contract, because of discrimination, or because they used their legal rights.

Job applicants, like employees, have some protections, even if they aren’t officially workers. They should not face bias in the hiring process because of their gender, age, national origin, ethnicity, religion, or any other protected characteristic. For instance, without the applicant’s consent, a prospective employer cannot inquire about the applicant’s religious beliefs or run a background or credit check.

Workers should be able to reasonably expect some level of privacy while on the job. This employee benefit extends to the worker’s private belongings, including but not limited to lockers, briefcases, backpacks, and handbags. Additionally, it contains employee-specific private mail.

Employees have the same right to privacy as everybody else when they are having private phone calls. On the other hand, while using the company’s network and computer system, such rights do not extend to work-related e-mail communications or Internet use.

Is There More Than One Form of Discrimination in the Workplace?

A violation of federal or state law may result in legal repercussions for an employer. Governments at the state and federal levels have established multiple anti-discrimination statutes since the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Some examples of prejudice that occur frequently in California workplaces are:

1. Issues of Nationality, Religion, and Race

If your company has fifteen or more employees, you are subject to the Civil Rights Act’s Title VII, which forbids discrimination based on race, color, national origin, or religion. Employers cannot discriminate against, demote, harass, refuse training to, or terminate an employee because of any of these protected qualities according to this federal statute.

The EEOC states that the following types of discrimination can occur in the workplace:

Having a negative attitude toward a candidate or employee just because of their race
Having a negative attitude toward a worker or candidate just because they exhibit racial traits, such as a certain hairstyle, skin tone, or set of facial features
Critiquing a candidate or worker unfairly due to the color of their skin
Unfair treatment of a job applicant or employee due to their marital status or association with a person of a specific racial, ethnic, national, or religious group

2. Gender and Sexual Discrimination

Harassment of a job candidate or employee due to their gender or gender identity is an example of this form of discrimination. It is a breach of Title VII to treat someone differently because of their gender identification, whether that’s their sexual orientation or their transgender status.

The legislation forbids any type of discrimination based on a person’s gender or sex in the workplace, including but not limited to employment, termination, promotions, assignments, training, layoffs, and more. In addition, regardless of a worker’s gender or sexual orientation, the federal Equal Pay Act mandates that they be paid the same for equal work.

3. Discrimination Based on Age

Anyone above the age of 40 cannot be subject to age discrimination in the workplace, according to the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). For instance, you can’t just fire your older workers and replace them with younger, cheaper workers; it’s against the law.

4. Discrimination Based on Disability

It is illegal to treat anyone differently because of their disability, according to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Also, workers with disabilities have the right to expect their employers to provide reasonable accommodations for them.

An employer has a responsibility to accommodate employees with disabilities, such as those who use wheelchairs, by providing appropriate facilities, such as parking spots and ramps.

Accommodations that are considered reasonable may also include changes to the employee’s work schedule or responsibilities, additional time off without pay, or the use of assistive technology.

5. Wage And Hour Law Violations

California has wage and hour laws that apply to all non-exempt workers. If you are not a full-time employee, an independent contractor, or a “exempt” employee, those laws won’t apply to you when it comes to meal breaks or overtime.

Companies frequently misclassify workers as independent contractors or exempt workers to get around paying them full salaries and benefits, so it’s crucial to know the difference.

How do you define an independent contractor?

An individual is considered an independent contractor if they provide a service for a set fee while keeping full control over the methods used to do the task. When compared to non-exempt workers, contractors have more leeway in setting their own work schedules and are exempt from the requirement to electronically record their time.

Who Are the Exempt Employees?

Executive, professional, and administrative staff members are examples of exempt workers. To be classified as “exempt,” a worker needs to be paid more than double the state minimum wage for all full-time jobs each month and spend more than half of their workday in a supervisory capacity.

How Much Is the California Minimum Wage?

According to California’s wage and hour legislation, all workers in the state are required to receive a minimum wage. For businesses in California with 26 or more workers, the minimum wage increased to $15 per hour on January 1, 2022, while businesses with twenty-five or fewer workers are required to pay $14 per hour.

After the recent hike, California’s minimum wage is now higher than any other U.S. state. Indeed, California’s minimum pay is twice the federal minimum wage, which is fixed at $7.25 per hour.

Do I have the right to overtime pay?

Workers in California are also eligible for overtime compensation. When workers put in more than 8 hours in a day or forty hours in a week, their employers are required to pay them “time and a half” overtime.

To avoid paying their workers overtime, employers cannot demand or encourage them to work “off the clock.” Work exceeding twelve hours in a single workday or eight hours on the 7th day of a workweek is subject to “double time” compensation from employers.

Do Companies Have to Provide Meal Breaks?

When working more than 5 hours a day, the majority of non-exempt workers in California are required to take a 30-minute meal break. Additionally, workers who put in more than ten hours each day are required to take an additional thirty minutes for lunch. Non-exempt workers in California also have the right to breaks. The federal government guarantees non-exempt workers ten minutes of rest time for every four hours they put in.

Workplace Sexual Harassment

If you harass a worker or job candidate because of their sex, you are breaking the law. Any form of unwanted sexual contact, including but not limited to physical or verbal approaches, requests for sexual favors, or other forms of sexual harassment, is considered sexual harassment in the workplace.

Harassment can take many forms, including direct physical contact or making disparaging comments about a person’s sexual orientation. It is against the law, for instance, to make offensive remarks about women in general in order to harass a female employee. Both the harassed and the harassed could be of the opposite or same sex.

You must keep in mind that the law does not prohibit casual remarks, taunting, or isolated incidences that are not deemed significant.

To be illegal, harassment must be persistent, aggressive, and severe enough to make the workplace unsafe or offensive, or to result in the victim’s dismissal, demotion, or forced resignation. The harasser might be someone the victim works closely with, such as a manager, client, or even a coworker.

Preventing Workplace Retaliation

It is illegal for employers to discriminate against job applicants or workers because they exercise their rights to participate in “protected behavior,” according to both federal and state legislation. Some examples of such actions are:

Taking legal action against one’s employer by filing a complaint or testifying as a witness
Reporting workplace harassment or discrimination to a manager or supervisor
Disobeying orders that would result in discrimination
Putting another person’s safety first or rejecting sexual advances
Inquiring about salaries from supervisors or coworkers to uncover any wage discrimination
Files a formal complaint with a federal or state agency over hazardous working conditions

There is zero tolerance for revenge against employees who take part in a complaint process. An employer may engage in retaliatory behavior if they do any of the following:

Retaliating against an employee by giving them a low performance review
Moving a person to a lower-paying job
Using abusive language or physical force against the worker
Using threats, either verbal or physical
Making unfounded accusations against the person

What Does “Wrongful Termination” Mean?

Employment in California is typically “at will,” meaning that employers are not required to provide employees a reason or cause to leave their jobs. On the other hand, a wrongful termination claim could be viable for an employee who loses their job due to discrimination, a breach of contract, or revenge for pursuing legal action.

Legally, an employer is guilty of “wrongful termination” if he or she fires an employee for reasons that are contrary to local, state, or federal employment regulations. If a company fires an employee because of their age but then hires a younger person for the same job but pays them significantly less, the older worker could sue for wrongful termination because it constitutes age discrimination.

It is also illegal for employers to terminate workers who seek to exercise their rights against wrongful termination. For instance, it is illegal for an employer to fire an employee in retaliation for filing a workers’ compensation claim or a complaint with the company’s HR department regarding sexual harassment. It would be considered wrongful termination and against the law.

What Steps Are Available to You?

An individual has several options available to them in the event that they experience a violation of their employee rights while on the job.

Keep your cool and don’t lash out at your boss. Get to know the terms of any work contracts you may have and always keep a copy on hand. Inquire about the reasons for your termination with your employer or HR. Request access to your personnel record. You are within your rights to do it. Pursue and reach an agreement on a severance package.

If you are uncomfortable signing anything, do not let your employer pressure you into doing so.

Have a quick question? We answered nearly 2000 FAQs.

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