Working as a caregiver in a private home, an assisted living facility or nursing home is hard work. If this is your job, you probably work long hours and return home physically and emotionally drained. You may provide 24-hour, live-in help to the elderly or incapacitated.
Many residential private households, residential care facilities and nursing homes ignore overtime laws. These violations can deprive caregivers of significant wages totaling thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. If you are a caregiver employed by someone who refuses to follow wage and hour laws, you may be entitled to significant compensation.
Reading up on your rights is the first step toward claiming what you are due. Discussing the matter with an experienced attorney at Chaleff Rehwald Peterson is the next and most important step.
When employers refuse to pay caregivers the legally required minimum or overtime wages, it is a form of wage theft. The employers are essentially stealing wages from workers who care for the elderly.
Thankfully, California law sets minimum requirements for a caregiver’s wages and working conditions. These laws include a minimum wage and overtime in most circumstances. An employer has no right to pay an employee less than the legally required minimum or overtime wages and anyone who does engage in wage theft.
Wage theft takes many forms and may include failing to pay for sleep or “on call” time, paying a weekly or daily salary that is too low or classifying an in-home caregiver as an “independent contractor” to circumvent California’s wage and hour laws.
California provides greater protection to caregivers than exists in most other states. For instance, on January 1, 2021 the minimum wage in California increased to $13.00/hour for employers with 25 employees or less and will incrementally increase to $15 by January 1, 2022. Cities can enact higher minimum wages. Caregivers who are victims of wage theft can claim the compensation that is legally due.
Until 2013, most caregivers working in private households were exempt from overtime payments under the so-called “personal attendant” overtime exemption of Wage Order 15. What this means is that prior to 2014, private households could force a caregiver to work 24 hours per day and only pay that caregiver the minimum wage for every hour worked. In reality, very few private households paid even this modest sum.
On January 1, 2014, California enacted the Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (DWBR). The DWBR mandates overtime payments for personal attendants. This law provides that an employer cannot hire personal attendants to work more than nine hours in a day or 45 hours in a workweek without paying overtime.
Overtime under the DWBR is set at one and one-half times the employee’s regular rate of pay. That means that if you are an in-home caregiver, you are entitled to 150% of your hourly wage for every hour you work over nine hours in any given day, and all hours you work beyond 45 hours in a week.
Now that the California legislature has created the right to overtime for personal attendants, an in-home caregiver who is not paid the required overtime wages can claim their unpaid wages. You can recover not just the overtime you are due, but also attorney’s fees and costs incurred in the lawsuit. It is also possible to recover interest and penalties if you are not properly paid overtime compensation.
Caregiver overtime law is highly complex. In fact, an entirely different set of laws apply to caregivers who work in residential care facilities and nursing homes for the elderly. These caregivers have always been entitled to overtime under California law. These caregivers must be paid overtime for all hours they work in excess of 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week. In addition, they are generally entitled to double time payments for all hours worked in excess of 12 in any single day and may be entitled to meal and rest breaks. The rules for sleep time, on-call time and live-ins are also different.
Many care facilities fail to pay overtime to caregivers and engage in other forms of wage theft. If you think that you have been the victim of wage theft, it is very important to contact the attorneys at Chaleff Rehwald Peterson who are familiar with the laws in this area.
If you are a caregiver and you believe that your employer has not paid you fairly under the law, you may have a strong case for compensation. Since the laws in this area are complex, you should contact an experienced attorney who has a documented and demonstrated expertise in representing caregivers. The attorneys at Chaleff Rehwald Peterson have the experience you need. We are here to help!
This article is an attorney advertisement written by Daniel Chaleff, employment law attorney at Chaleff Rehwald Peterson. Our office is located at 5855 Topanga Canyon Blvd., Suite 400, Woodland Hills, California. We accept cases throughout all of Northern and Southern California. Our examples are of a general nature and are not a guarantee regarding the outcome of your individual matter. The law firm focuses on caregiver rights. Please call us at (818) 807-4168 for a free and confidential consultation. Please visit us at www.caregiverovertime.com to learn more about caregiver overtime law. We offer a 24-hour chat line on our website.