Wage Law

The Ninth Circuit has reinstated an arbitration decision that had been vacated by the U.S. District Court. In SW Reg. Council of Carpenters v. Drywall Dynamics, Inc. (9th Cir. 14-55250 5/19/16), the arbitrator ruled that an employer was bound by a memorandum of understanding extending the term of a labor agreement. The district court vacated the arbitration award on the grounds that the arbitrator’s interpretation of the parties’ agreement was not plausible and was contrary to public policy. The Ninth Circuit held that the district court’s decision exceeded its narrow authority to determine whether the arbitrator’s award was based on the parties’ contract and whether it violated an explicit, well-defined, and dominant public policy. You can read the entire opinion at this link. [PDF]

The Supreme Court has agreed to review the Court of Appeal's decision in Alvarado v. Dart Container Corp. of California (2016) 243 Cal.App.4th 1200 (SC S232607/E061645, review granted, 5/11/16), concerning overtime calculations and the "regular rate of pay" for employees paid flat sum bonuses.

In Alvarado, the employer calculated overtime as follows:

1. Multiply the number of overtime hours worked in a pay period by the straight hourly rate (straight hourly pay for overtime hours).
2. Add the total amount owed in a pay period for (a) regular non-overtime work, (b) for extra pay such as attendance bonuses, and (c) overtime due from the first step. That total amount is divided by the total hours worked during the pay period. This amount is the employee’s “regular rate.”
3. Multiply the number of overtime hours worked in a pay period by the employee’s regular rate, which is determined in step 2. This amount is then divided in half to obtain the “overtime premium” amount, which is multiplied by the total number of overtime hours worked in the pay period (overtime premium pay).
4. Add the amount from step 1 to the amount in step 3 (total overtime pay). This overtime pay is added to the employee’s regular hourly pay and the attendance bonus.

Plaintiff contends that this method fails to pay proper overtime in violation of Labor Code sections 510 and 1194 by not including shift differential premiums and bonuses in calculating overtime rates.

Defendant prevailed on a motion for summary judgment. The court found that there was no legal basis for plaintiff’s proposed formula because federal law did not conflict with the employer's method and there was no California law providing a formula for calculating overtime on bonuses, and plaintiff’s proposed formula was based solely on California public policy and void regulations from the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) Manual which have no force or effect.

Plaintiff contended that Marin v. Costco Wholesale Corp. (2008) 169 Cal.App.4th 804 applies and under that holding, the defendant’s formula dilutes and reduces the regular rate of pay by including overtime hours when calculating the regular rate of pay used to compute overtime on plaintiff’s flat sum bonuses.

The question presented on review is:

What is the proper method for calculating the rate of overtime pay when an employee receives both an hourly wage and a flat sum bonus?

You can follow the progress in Alvarado here.

In Corbin v. Time Warner (9th Cir. 13-55622 5/2/16), the 9th Circuit affirmed a district court’s summary judgment in favor of Time Warner Entertainment-Advance/Newhouse Partnership in a putative class action brought by a Time Warner employee.  In his rounding claim, plaintiff alleged that Time Warner's policy of rounding all employee time stamps to the nearest quarter hour deprived him of earned overtime compensation. The plaintiff also alleged that he was not compensated for one minute when he mistakenly opened an auxiliary computer program before logging into Time Warner’s timekeeping software.

The court held that Time Warner’s rounding policy complied with the federal rounding regulation, 29 C.F.R. § 785.48(b) and that the policy was neutral both on its face and as applied to plaintiff. They concluded that the district court properly interpreted and applied the regulation, and granted summary judgment to the employer.  The district court also properly granted summary judgment on plaintiff’s log-in claim and classified the one minute of uncompensated time as de minimis. The court held that all three factors in Lindow v. United States (9th Cir. 1984) 738 F.2d 1057, 1062 supported the district court’s conclusion that plaintiff’s one minute of uncompensated time was de minimis.

Finally, the 9th Circuit held that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate the existence of a material fact to his derivative California state law claims. Because the court affirmed the summary judgment to Time Warner on the rounding claim, there was no need for the district court to reconsider whether the claim can form the basis of a viable class action proceeding.