Page 1
S.C. Clarifies Wage Order for Ninth Circuit
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The California Supreme Court yesterday answered three questions certified to it by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, interpreting a wage order promulgated by the state Industrial Welfare Commission requiring that employees in certain industries be paid at least minimum wages for all “hours worked.”
Justice Goodwin H. Liu wrote for a unanimous court.
He noted that the wage order in issue—No. 16—applies to employees in the construction, drilling, logging, and mining industries. This includes George Huerta, who brought a putative class action in the Monterey Superior Court which defendant CSI Electrical Contractors removed to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
Huerta appealed an adverse judgment to the Ninth Circuit which sought guidance from the state’s high court, saying in its July 8, 2022 order of certification:
“No controlling California precedent has answered the certified questions presented here. These questions are dispositive in this case and have significant public policy implications for California workers and employers.”
Liu advised in yesterday’s opinion that under the wage order:
•“[A]n employee’s time spent on an employer’s premises awaiting and undergoing an employer-mandated exit procedure that includes the employer’s visual inspection of the employee’s personal vehicle is compensable as ‘hours worked.’ ”
•“[T]he time that an employee spends traveling between the Security Gate and the employee parking lots…is not compensable as ‘hours worked’ because an employer’s imposition of ordinary workplace rules on employees during their drive to the worksite in a personal vehicle does not create the requisite level of employer control” but “is compensable as ‘employer-mandated travel.’ ”
•Despite certain types of collective bargaining agreements specifying that an employee will not be paid for meal periods, “that time is nonetheless compensable under the wage order as ‘hours worked’ if the employer prohibits the employee from leaving the employer’s premises or a designated area during the meal period and if this prohibition prevents the employee from engaging in otherwise feasible personal activities.”
The case is Huerta v. CSI Electrical Contractors, 2024 S.O.S. 1082.
Huerta was represented by Pasadena attorney Lonnie C. Blanchard III and Westlake Village practitioner Peter R. Dion-Kindem. Acting for CSI Electrical Contractors Inc. were Daniel Benjamin Chammas and Min Kyung Kim of the downtown Los Angeles firm of Ford & Harrison, LLP.
Copyright 2024, Metropolitan News Company