I have a question that maybe some one here might know the answer. I am working in california for a retail company. I am paid hourly. I am working 10am-6pm on one day and then attending a mandatory meeting at another location from 7:30pm-9:30pm. Do I recieve overtime pay for the 7:30pm-9:30pm shift? Are employers in california required to give a 4 hour break in between a split shift? Please help... :confused:

This is actually a very tricky situation. I will try to explain it here.

I will assume that you are non-exempt. You state that you are paid hourly, and most hourly employees are non-exempt. However, in retail certain hourly+commissioned employees can be exempt from overtime.

Being non-exempt, you need to be paid overtime for all hours worked over 8 in a day. You also need to be provided proper meal and rest breaks.

When you work from 10AM-6PM, you should have been provided a 30 minute meal break. However, you don't mention any. As such, are entitled to a meal penalty of 1 hours pay.

Now, the tricky part is the break from 6PM to 7:30PM. What I would need to know is how long it takes you to get to that other location. All travel time to the second location is also work time. In addition, because it past 8 hours in the day, it is overtime. All the time from 7:30-9:30 needs to be paid at overtime.

The reason the length of the travel time is important is that it might make the entire period from 6PM-730PM work time. For instance, if the travel time is 50 minutes or greater, it is likely that the entire time will be treated as work time. This is because breaks of less than 20 minutes are considered work time. You would have a 20 min break before leaving, drive 50 minutes, and the take another 20 min break. All of this would count as work time.

If the travel time is less than 50 minutes, then you would still get paid for the actual travel time. However, you would also have 40 minutes of unpaid breaks. This would likely be seen as creating a split-shift and you would be entitled to an additional $6.75 for the split shift.

The employer could also claim that the 1 hour of the break is for an evening meal. In this case, the travel time would only need to be 30 minutes in order to defeat the split-shift.

In any case, the split-shift pay is only $6.75 for the whole thing, so it is usually not something employers worry about. More importantly is that your travel time and the mandatory meeting must be paid for at an overtime rate.

I get commision as an incentive if the store makes 100% of its sales plan. However, I am only guarenteed an hourly rate. Sometimes I have commision and other times not. It will take me about 50 minutes to drive from one store to the other. I signed a meal release waiver stating that I would waive my lunch breaks if there was no one working with me. So I do not recieve a 30 minute break. How does this change things?

The commissions need to equal your hourly rate of pay in order to exempt you from overtime. That is, 1/2 of you total gross income must come from commissions for the pay period. It does not seem like that is the case here.

In addition, this type of payment would not qualify as a commission payment. It is not a percentage of the price of anything you are selling, so it would be considered a bonus, not commission. As such, you would likely be entitled to overtime.

You are allowed to waive the meal break as you indicated. As such, you would not be entitled to a meal penalty, but the time is still considered work time.

Given that the travel time is 50 minutes, it is possible that the entire time would need to be paid for. It would depend whether the employer gives treats any of the time as a meal break. The employer could treat 30 minutes of it as a meal break, and then only pay you for 1 hours of travel. I would see this as being reasonable.

In any case, you would need to be paid overtime for the 1 hour for travel and then the 2 hours of meeting. Please note that the employer can pay a different rate for travel of meeting time. However, the employer must tell you what that rate is before you perform the work. What happens when they pay you a different rate is also fairly complicated, so I won't get into it here as they seem to be either not paying you at all for the time or not paying you overtime.

Thank you for your much needed advice.