In California, various pieces of legislation are on the books to combat overtime pay indiscretions in certain sectors. To that end, according to the Sacramento Bee (9/20/13), California Governor Jerry Brown is poised to sign AB 241, a bill brought forward by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, the Democrat from San Francisco.
If signed, the bill would include domestic workers such as in-home nannies and caregivers in overtime laws that would see them receive overtime after working more than nine hours in a day, or 45 hours in a week.
According to the Sacramento Bee, the bill aligns with a recently passed federal statute that provides overtime pay to home health workers. However, the federal bill - which does not come into effect until January 2015 - does not cover privately employed in-home child care workers (nannies). The state bill would include nannies in California overtime law, and would cover them sooner. The bill, if signed, would come into effect this coming January, a full year ahead of the federal statute.
Meanwhile, a class-action unpaid overtime lawsuit brought by bank brokers against Bank of America (BofA) and Merrill Lynch will not have arbitration foisted upon them following a recent ruling by a federal judge, effectively quashing the arbitration attempt.
The overtime pay class-action lawsuit was filed this past March and contends that bank brokers, known throughout the industry as financial solutions advisers, are not exempt from the provision of overtime pay for non-managerial employees.
One of the class plaintiffs named in the lawsuit is a broker who hails from California, making this case of interest to California overtime law.
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FINRA rules “explicitly prohibit the enforcement of arbitration agreements against a member of [a continuing] putative class or collective action.”
The overtime pay lawsuit seeks back pay representing unpaid overtime for more than 100 members named in the class, and damages estimated to exceed $5 million in total.
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Private families and households will determine that it becomes to cost prohibitive to hire a caregiver for a 12 hour shift. Those longer hour shifts will soon become a thing of the past. Families will either split the 12 hour day between 2 separate caregivers, or they will simply hire someone for 8 hours per day instead of 12. This will reduce a caregivers earning potential by 50% or 33% respectively.
The other service that will completely go away for caregivers is Live-In services. Many caregivers choose to live in with clients. This provides a convenient alternative for many in the care-giving profession to have paid room and board, meals and utilities while caring for an aging patient. Given these new rules, Live-In services will simply become unaffordable. This service option will all but disappear for families and for caregivers who want to work these cases.
The unintended consequences of these two pieces of legislation will have far reaching effects. The only ones who will benefit from these rule changes will be the attorneys who collect 60% of the unpaid wages from private families who were unaware of the law change.