Los Angeles’s Labor Commissioner’s Office (LCO) announced that it reached a $1 million settlement for wage theft violations. The LCO explained that 107 warehouse and retail employees who worked for La Mina De Oro, KD Distributors, Inc., and Desire Fragrances Inc. between August 1, 2014, and September 30, 2016, will be compensated for unpaid hours worked which resulted in receiving less than minimum wage for those hours, unpaid daily overtime, and missed meal and rest breaks that the employers did not provide. The LCO encouraged those workers to contact the LCO at 833-LCO-INFO [(833) 526-4636].
Some of those workers apparently complained that they were not being paid for all hours worked, wage statements did not include required information such as all earned overtime pay or and uncompliant meal breaks. Allegedly, the employers only paid overtime after 40 hours in a week but failed to pay overtime after eight hours in a day which is required under California law. Also, the employees were purportedly required to be ready to serve customers during meal and rest breaks. Those are illegal on duty breaks. Under California law meal and rest breaks must be off duty and uninterrupted, such that employees must be allowed to go do whatever they want including leave the work premises for the complete duration of 30-minute meal breaks and 10-minute rest breaks.
See Links: Labor Code sections 226, 226.7, 510, 512