In California, the general overtime provisions are that a nonexempt employee 18 years of age or older, or any minor employee 16 or 17 years of age who is not required by law to attend school and is not otherwise prohibited by law from engaging in the subject work, shall not be employed more than eight hours in any workday or more than 40 hours in any workweek unless he or she receives one and one-half times his or her regular rate of pay for all hours worked over eight hours in any workday and over 40 hours in the workweek. Eight hours of labor constitutes a day's work, and employment beyond eight hours in any workday or more than six days in any workweek is permissible provided the employee is compensated for the overtime at not less than: 1. One and one-half times the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of eight hours up to and including 12 hours in any workday, and for the first eight hours worked on the seventh consecutive day of work in a workweek; and 2. Double the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 12 hours in any workday and for all hours worked in excess of eight on the seventh consecutive day of work in a workweek. There are, however, a number of exemptions from the overtime law. An "exemption" means that the overtime law does not apply to a particular classification of employees. There are also a number of exceptions to the general overtime law stated above. An "exception" means that overtime is paid to a certain classification of employees on a basis that differs from that stated above. Please refer to the State of California website at www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_overtime.htm.
A question that comes up from time to time - Does the sentence above including the following language " she receives one and one-half times his or her regular rate of pay for all hours worked over eight hours in any workday and over 40 hours in the workweek" require the employer to pay for time and one-half for hours over the 40 in a week and 8 in a day? The answer is No. The overtime hours to be paid over the 8 hours are excluded from the total hours for the over 40 hours in the workweek.
For example, assume the employees works three 9 hours days, one 8 hour day and one 7 hour day for a total of 42 hours. Since the 9 hour days contain 3 overtime hours, subtract these 3 hours from the 42 to compute the overtime to be paid. In this case 39 hours are left, thus no hours over 40 are required to be paid.
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