Training Company Hit with California Labor Lawsuit

Solano, CAIt is safe to say that the various statutes and rules governing California labor law have been on the books and available to employers for time eternal. And yet, employers continue to stand accused of circumventing labor laws and California labor code at the expense of employees.

One of the latest examples of litigation alleging affronts to California labor employment law is a class-action California labor lawsuit targeting Inter-Coast International Training (Inter-Coast). The assertion, according to court documents, is that employees were not paid overtime in accordance with overtime laws.

Specifically, it is alleged the defendant improperly classified its instructors as exempt from qualifying for overtime while being made to undertake non-exempt administrative tasks such as grading exams, submitting attendance reports and adhering to course outlines at the behest of the employer. Performing such tasks, according to the California labor lawsuit, effectively pushed them into an overtime situation, for which the plaintiffs should have been paid overtime.

California law allows that employees involved in administrative tasks, employed as supervisors or undertaking management functions - and salaried employees who achieve a certain income threshold - can be considered exempt from overtime. Thus, when work commitments require additional hours from time to time as needed, it is thought that management personnel and other highly paid staff members are already sufficiently compensated and thus, are not afforded the opportunity for overtime pay.

However, hourly employees who perform tasks of a non-administrative nature are, by law, entitled to overtime pay at a rate of time-and-one-half for all hours worked beyond eight hours in any given day, and 40 hours in any given week. This also holds true if meal periods and rest breaks - also mandated under California state labor laws - are not taken due to employees, either by circumstance or at the behest of the employer, working through them.

A common practice amongst employers attempting to minimize the costs associated with overtime is the misclassification of employees as exempt from overtime. Thus, employees classified as exempt who wind up performing non-exempt tasks for the majority of their day, will often turn to the courts through a California labor lawsuit.

Such is the case here. The California employee labor law class action is Suzanne Taylor-Bacon et al v. Inter-Coast International Training, Inc. Case No. FCS046848, filed April 1, 2016 in the Superior Court for the State of California, in and for the County of Solano.