California Labor Guidance
Free plain-English summaries of opinion letters, administrative policies, and interpretive notices from California's labor agency, with the current status and the official source on every page.
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Deducting partial-day absences of exempt employees from leave balances
An employer asked whether it could deduct hours from an exempt employee's accrued vacation or sick leave bank for a series of specific partial-day absence scenarios. DLSE confirmed that while an exemp…
Wage deduction authorization for overpayments due to payroll practice
A law firm asked whether an employee's electronic timesheet reporting unpaid time off, submitted after a biweekly advance payment, counts as authorization to deduct the resulting overpayment from the …
Wage deductions for property damage require gross negligence or willful misconduct
An employer asked whether it could deduct from employees' wages for vehicle "accidents," believing deductions for simple negligence were barred but deductions for gross negligence or willful misconduc…
Tardiness wage deductions limited to Labor Code section 2928's narrow exception
An employer asked the DLSE to reconcile Labor Code section 2928, which allows deducting up to a half-hour's wage for tardiness of less than 30 minutes, with the general rule that employees must be pai…
Payroll payment by cash-dispensing machine
A union attorney asked whether it was legal for an employer to pay "day laborers" through a leased cash-dispensing machine (CDM) that charged a $1 fee and paid out only in bills, rather than by a stan…
Negative election to participate in 401(k) plans
A benefits attorney asked DLSE to reconsider its 1998 opinion that "negative election" 401(k) enrollment (automatically deducting a contribution unless the employee opts out) violates California law, …
Commission calculations
A commissioned coffee salesperson asked about his employer's plan that debited 50% of any invoice unpaid after 90 days from his commission account, and that limited commissions at termination to those…
Tardiness
A manufacturing employer's counsel described a proposed plan to refuse to let late-arriving employees clock in until the top of the next hour, so they'd be paid for less than eight hours. DLSE pointed…
Disciplinary deductions from an exempt employee's salary
An attorney e-mailed DLSE's Info Web Site asking whether an employer may dock a full week's pay from an exempt employee for disciplinary reasons, or deduct a lesser amount such as one or two days' pay…
Exempt employee: pro rata salary deduction on a 4-day workweek
A trade association asked, on behalf of a member, how much to deduct from an exempt employee's leave bank if that employee had voluntarily arranged to work only 4 days (about 10 hours each) per week a…
No exempt-salary deduction for a full-day absence if the employer expects some duty
An employer group asked DLSE's Info Web Site whether an exempt employee who checks voicemail and e-mail for 10-15 minutes during an otherwise full-day vacation absence can still have that day's salary…
Exempt employee: salary reduction tied to reduced hours or a shortened workweek
An employer posed five detailed scenarios asking whether cutting an exempt employee's salary destroys the exemption, ranging from a companywide across-the-board pay cut to a scheme pairing a salary cu…
Deductions: debiting a manager's pay for staff salary and expenses; debits against insurance-sales commissions
At the request of a superior court judge presiding over a wage dispute, DLSE answered several questions about an insurance company's practice of debiting sales managers' pay. It concluded that debitin…
Deductions for overpayment of wages
An employee asked DLSE what the law is when an employer overpays wages, and how DLSE enforces it. DLSE explained that under Barnhill v. Saunders and CSEA v. State of California, an employer cannot sim…
Negative-election 401(k) deductions violate Labor Code 221
An employer asked whether it could switch its 401(k) enrollment from an opt-in ("positive election") system to one where employees are automatically enrolled and contributions deducted unless they aff…
Bonuses paid in scrip violate Labor Code 212
An employer asked whether it could pay store employees a non-discretionary performance bonus in scrip redeemable only through a single vendor's catalogue, and whether offering a nominal cash value for…
Charging job applicants for required training is unlawful; training time is hours worked
A law firm asked whether a telemarketing employer could charge a training fee (waived after five days of employment) to job applicants who had to complete the employer's own training class to be consi…
Electronic (phone/computer) authorization for payroll deductions can satisfy Labor Code 224
An employer asked whether authorizing payroll deductions (for benefits elections) by telephone or computer transmission, rather than a signed paper form, satisfies Labor Code section 224's requirement…
Follow-up on the remuneration test: hourly overtime pay to exempt employees, per Boykin v. Boeing
This is DLSE's follow-up to its April 28, 1997 letter to the same attorney on the "remuneration" requirement for the administrative, executive, and professional exemptions. That earlier letter had rel…
Salary basis: DLSE revises its 'remuneration' test for the administrative/executive/professional exemptions
An employment attorney asked DLSE eleven detailed questions about how the "remuneration" requirement in the IWC Wage Orders' administrative, executive, and professional exemptions should be construed.…
Temporary-placement-agency workers: final pay timing and wage deductions for employee fault
An attorney for a temporary placement agency asked DLSE to confirm that Labor Code sections 201 and 202's final-pay deadlines applied only when a worker was permanently taken off the agency's payroll …
'Cashing in' vested vacation at a discount to current wage rate risks a void wage release
A law firm asked whether an employer, having complied with Labor Code section 227.3 and the Suastez line of cases on vacation, could let employees voluntarily "cash in" vested vacation accrued under a…
Employer may not deduct the cost of reissuing a lost or stolen payroll check from wages
A law firm asked whether an employer may charge an employee for the cost of replacing a lost or stolen payroll check, arguing a lost check differs from the cash-loss scenarios addressed in prior Labor…
DLSE will keep enforcing the Wage Orders' gross-negligence wage deduction, but warns it may be void as against public policy
An employer's HR representative asked DLSE to define "simple" versus "gross" negligence for purposes of deducting the cost of lost or damaged equipment from an employee's final paycheck, and whether s…
IWC Wage Order §9's deduction for an unreturned uniform or safety item is likely unenforceable against final wages, despite its plain text
An employer's counsel asked whether it was legal to deduct the cost of an unreturned company-issued safety belt from an employee's wages, since Section 9 of the Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Orde…
An 'explicit wage agreement' must specifically fix daily/weekly hours and the true regular rate; California, unlike federal law, does not permit a fluctuating workweek
An employer representative wrote to DLSE tracing the caselaw on "explicit wage agreements" that set the regular rate of pay as an hourly wage, for dairy workers under Wage Order 14-80. DLSE agreed wit…
An employer cannot recover overpaid vacation wages from an employee's final paycheck; that self-help deduction violates the state's wage-exemption public policy
Out-of-state counsel asked DLSE to confirm several statements in a proposed vacation policy, including that an employer could recover overpaid vacation wages from an employee's final paycheck. DLSE co…
A pre-vesting 'sign-on bonus' advance is a debt, not earned wages, so an employer cannot deduct its unearned portion from an employee's final paycheck even with written authorization
Counsel described a $5,000 sign-on bonus paid at the start of employment and earned incrementally over five months, with the employee's written authorization to deduct any unearned portion from the fi…
Commission forfeitures for 'uncollectible' or 'slow paying' customer accounts are illegal; bad debts are a cost of doing business
An employer's counsel described a sales commission plan that forfeited one-third of a commission if a customer account went unpaid past sixty-one days, the full commission past ninety-one days, and ad…
Payroll deductions for voluntary spouse/dependent health-plan contributions don't violate Labor Code § 224
Counsel for an employer asked DLSE whether requiring employees who voluntarily elect optional spouse, dependent, or family health coverage to pay their share of the premium through a signed payroll-de…
Repayable quarterly 'yearly' bonus for nurses raises substantial-performance and deduction problems
An attorney asked DLSE about a bonus plan for nurses that pays a yearly bonus in quarterly installments, with repayment required if the employee does not complete a full year. DLSE said paying the bon…
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These are official interpretive documents from California's labor agency: opinion letters answering questions from employers and workers, administrative policies, and interpretive notices. They show how the agency applies wage-and-hour and workplace law to real situations, but they are guidance, not statutes or court decisions, and the agency can supersede or withdraw them. Every page above shows the document's current status, when that status was last verified, and a link to the official source.