I work for a celebrity in Los Angeles. I am paid well at $60K per year. Last year I received a $7K Christmas bonus "for all my overtime last year". I know it's a QUALITY PROBLEM, but I worked 370 hours of overtime. In comparison, the cook received a $20K bonus for working the same overtime. When added together, I came up far short. Do I have a case?

Additionally, my work hours are 10am to 7pm and my boss wants me to take my 1 hour lunch from 12:30p to 1:30p when everyone else does, but I want to take it after I've been at work for 5 or 6 hours. Do I have any rights with this.

I AM NOT a supervisor, as there is a live-in Estate Manager and an 8 person household staff. I know there are many other assistants with similar problems.

Any advise is appreciated.

I believe that there may possibly be an exemption from the overtime requirements in California for personal assistants such as you. However, I'll let our California attorney guru address that in particular. I'm assuming your celebrity is treating you as employee, deducting taxes, etc.?

BTW, for my prurient side, who IS your celebrity? ;)

As we all know, the laws in California apply equally to celebrities as non-celebrities.

There is an exemption for assistants to whom discretionary duties are regulary delegatged to. This usually takes place in larger companies where the assistant is delegated significant responsibility. Simply performing routine or day to day tasks will not exempt you from overtime. For instance, if you can determine who the celebrity will meet with and write letters for her organization, or are delegated important tasks relating to her career and job, then you would be exempt. Usually such task are done by the agent or PR person. Thus, if you do day to day task of a personal nature you will be entitled to overtime. The fact that they attempt to pay a bonus to cover the overtime is an indication that they owe it to you. Any such attempt to disguise the payment of overtime will not be successful. The bonus will be seen as a bonus and you will be entitled to overtime.

Hmm, oh well, nice try on my part. :(

But I still want to know who the celebrity is! :D