AB 241 Would Bring Overtime Pay to Nannies

Sacramento, CAMost people wouldn’t dream of walking out of a store with an item, and not paying for it. Or strolling into a dealer to test-drive a car, and never bringing it back. That’s stealing. And that’s exactly what employers do when they flaunt overtime pay laws and refuse to pay their workers overtime. The employer is stealing hours of your time. It’s nothing short of theft.

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.

In his ruling quashing the defendant’s motion favoring arbitration under the auspices of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority Inc. (FINRA), Judge Harold Baer of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York wrote that the relevant laws and interpretations by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) “each reject [Merrill’s and Bank of America’s] contention that arbitration should be compelled at this stage of the litigation,” the judge ruled.

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.