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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Travel time pay for an employee working alternating worksites
An employer asked whether an employee who alternates weeks between two work locations must be paid for the roughly 1.5-hour daily commute to the more distant site. The DLSE explained that an ordinary …
Hours worked: time spent traveling on an out-of-town business trip
A non-exempt employee asked whether he was entitled to pay for time spent flying to and from a mandatory out-of-town training class, after his employer's staff manual denied pay for travel outside nor…
On-call time, travel time, and vehicle expenses for beeper-dispatched service technicians
An attorney asked whether on-call vending-machine repair technicians who carry a beeper and drive their own cars between calls are owed pay for on-call waiting time, travel time to and between calls, …
DLSE reverses its 1984 policy: the overtime premium on mixed hourly rates must use the weighted average of all rates paid that day, not the rate in effect when overtime began
Prompted by a challenge to its enforcement position, DLSE reevaluated how to calculate the overtime premium when an employee is paid two or more different hourly rates in one day (for example, a lower…
DLSE reverses its 1984 overtime-premium policy for mixed hourly rates, initially describing a daily weighted-average calculation
Responding to the same attorney correspondence addressed three weeks later in DLSE opinion letter 1992.05.14, DLSE announced it was reversing its 1984 enforcement policy of basing the overtime premium…
Owner-operator truck driver pay plans must separately reimburse vehicle operating costs under Labor Code §2804, and extra commute time beyond a customer delivery must be paid
A trucking company's counsel described a proposed pay plan for employee-drivers who own their own trucks, paying an hourly wage plus a share of the broker's revenue, and asked whether commute time aft…
Employer-directed travel time is hours worked in California with no federal-style 8-hour cap, unlike under the FLSA
An employer asked whether it complied with California law by paying only 8 hours of normal wages on days when employees were non-working passengers on planes or other transportation for 8 or more hour…
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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.