California Plaintiff Alleges Violations of Overtime, Meal Breaks

Los Angeles, CAThe new year brought a resolution to right a wrong for one California plaintiff, who last month filed a California Labor Lawsuit alleging nonpayment of owed overtime pay, together with the lack of provision and allowance for uninterrupted meal breaks as required under California labor law and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

The lawsuit was brought January 15 by Maria Chona Rodriguez, naming El Toro Medical Investors and Life Care Centers of America as defendants.

According to the California labor lawsuit, the defendants are accused of failing to accurately “record and pay Plaintiff and other California Class Members for the actual amount of time these employees worked, including overtime worked.” California labor law holds that a non-exempt employee is paid for hours worked on an hourly basis and as such, is due overtime pay when those hours of work exceed 8 hours in any given day, or 40 hours in any given workweek.

Additionally, employees are entitled to an uninterrupted meal period not less than a half hour in length and required to be taken before the non-exempt employee works for a period of five hours. That provision is mandated under California and labor law.

And there is yet another aspect of this proposed class-action lawsuit: an allegation of failure to adequately disclose and obtain proper authorization for conducting background checks on their employees. The Fair Credit Report Act observes various rules and regulations with regard to conducting background checks and disclosure, and it is alleged in the California Labor Code lawsuit that this was not followed.

California state labor laws exist to safeguard employees against employers who may seek to take advantage of their workers in an effort to either save dollars or increase their productivity allegedly on the backs of unsuspecting workers. Misclassification is often another ploy to skirt around the overtime pay issue, by classifying employees as exempt from overtime - classifying an employee as performing a management or administrative job, for example - only to have the employee performing menial tasks that would not otherwise be within the purview of an administrative or management function.

The proposed California and labor law class action is intended to represent all those similarly situated who were employed by the defendants at their facilities located in the state.

The California Labor Lawsuit is Maria Chona Rodriguez v. El Toro Medical Investors Limited Partnership et al, Case # 8:16-cv-00059, before Judge Josephine L. Staton in US District Court, Central District of California.