California Workers' Rights
Wage and Hour Pathfinder
Before it is possible to determine the rights of a particular worker, you must have a general understanding of the field of wage and hour law: what laws have been enacted and what types of protections have been put in place. A good place to start is with a treatise or practice guide.
There are many of these available. Most cover employment law generally and include a section on wage and hour law, but a few cover that area exclusively (most of these are directed at employers and HR departments).
Public Libraries
A public library can provide you with valuable resources and is free for every person with a library card. Many, like the San Francisco Public Library, have catalogs that can be searched online.
A search in the full collection using the terms "employment law"fn1 brought up many relevant results and many more irrelevant -- most were on discrimination. "Wage and hour law" returned a higher percentage of relevant results and fewer total. Most of the results returned were self-help type books directed at lay readers.
One such book was Guerin, Lisa, Everyday Employment Law: The Basics, Nolo (2004). Geared toward employers and not lawyers, it is written in clear, simple language and has an easy-to-access layout with many visual cues, charts and highlighted key points. The table of contents illustrates the primary purpose of the book: it is written from a practical perspective for employers, moving through hiring to policy development to layoffs. Its utility is not limited to employers, though--it could be read by any worker curious what his rights were at each stage.
The table of contents allowed me to quickly move to the chapter on wage and hour law. This chapter includes a synopsis of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as charts laying out information on all states' current (at time of publishing) minimum wages, overtime rules and break rules, including citations for the laws in question.
Exemptions are not discussed in any depth, nor are they cited. Several are mentioned in passing, though, which would alert the reader concerned about the industry in question to look further.
Law Libraries
Another good place to look is a law library, many of which are open to the public at least part time. The Hastings Law Library opens its doors to the public for several hours each weekday. (A state-issued ID is required to gain access to the building)
A search of the Hastings Catalog for "employment law California" returned a large number of helpful results, but many were irrelevant, and the wading through was fairly cumbersome.
"Wage and hour" returned fewer, more relevant, results and is the search I would recommend. It is important to note, however, that this latter search missed two important practice guides, published by Rutter and Matthew Bender, which are available in the library but will be discussed below, in online sources.
A good resource that did come up in the "wage and hour" search was Simmons, Richard J., Wage and Hour Manual for California Employers, Castle (8th ed. 2001). This book provides a thorough overview of the interplay between California and federal wage and hour laws and is a great guidebook for the many nuances of the law. It is a fairly detailed book, though, and the typeface and layout make it a little difficult to navigate (there are few helpful visual cues). For these reasons, it is a bit difficult to access--there is no good jumping in point.
Online Sources - Westlaw and Lexis
The best place to find treatises and practice guides is probably the online legal search engines, Westlaw and Lexis. Both allow you to browse by area of law and type of publication, which makes finding a treatise on a specific topic a breeze.
Both services offer many ways to access similar information. The best ways I found are detailed below.
Go to the Search tab and click on the By Source sub-heading. Under Area of Law by Topic click on Labor and Employment. Then, under Search Analysis, Law Reviews & Journals, click on By Publisher and then Matthew Bender. This publisher has multiple state-specific guides. After choosing a source, click on the name of the source, then on Go to Table of Contents, then Search using Table of Contents. Lexis makes you jump through hoops to avoid using their text search features.
I found Wilcox, California Employment Law, which is published by Matthew Bender, to be a helpful resource. This publication provides a good overview of Employment Law from an employment lawyer's perspective. The introductions to each Division provide brief but useful synopses of the major concerns that will follow. Division I provides a thorough discussion of Wage and Hour Law in California. This guide is very similar to the Rutter Guide, below, which I prefer.
Go to the Westlaw Directory and into Forms, Treatises, CLEs and Other Practice Material. Within that area of the directory, I searched for "employment ca." "Employment California" returned few relevant results, and "employment" alone missed some important databases.
The best result returned from the "employment ca" search was The Rutter Group California Practice Guide: Employment Litigation (TRG-CAEMPL). After clicking on it, I find the best way in is through the table of contents, which you can access by clicking the link in the top right corner of the search page.
Alternately, if you are looking for another jurisdiction, the best way may be to Go the the Directory into Topical Practice Areas to Labor and Employment and then to Forms, Treatises, CLEs and Other Practice Material. This way is more comprehensive (which also means more to wade through).
The California Employment Litigation volume of the Rutter Guide covers much of the field of employment law, from a practitioner's standpoint. It provides an overview of the law, relevant statutory and case authority, practice pointers and bits on analyzing a case from both the plaintiff's and defendant's perspective. It is a helpful starting point for understanding key concepts and learning terms of art. It is also an excellent jumping off point for case research. It is updated annually (last update: November 2007).
I prefer the Rutter Guide to the Matthew Bender Guide. For one, because I am more familiar with it, but I also find the online layout more accessible. Larger sections of text are on screen at one time, so there is less jumping back and forth between text and table of context as you read. There are also links within the page to make jumping around the larger document easier.
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR (DOL)
Although it does not deal with California Law, it is worth mentioning that the DOL has a handy overview of federal minimum wage and overtime law here.
One More
An additional, helpful resource that I had access to was the Workers' Rights Clinic Employment Law Manual, Legal Aid Society - Employment Law Center (2006). This publication is an excellent resource for all areas of employment law. It is intended for use by clinic counselors (primarily law students) and lays out the major considerations in a way that is conducive to quickly evaluating a case. Information on obtaining a manual is available through the Community Legal Services Program of the LAS-ELC.
The table of contents of a treatise or practice guide is a good place for a very initial introduction. It shows you in broad strokes how the law is broken down and thought about by practitioners. The table of contents will also help you determine where to dive in.
In the Rutter Guide, for instance, Chapter 1-Introduction looked like a good place to start. The secondary table of contents (the one within Chapter 1) showed me that there was very little to interest me in this section, as most of it covered employment law too broadly. However, I did note the purpose and scope of the guide, which was an early indication that it would be helpful.
I also noted that labor law today is made up primarily of statutes and case law that have expanded traditional employee rights, have made them enforceable through civil actions, and have provided the right to jury trials in many cases.
Delving deeper into the main table of contents, I came to Chapter 11-Compensation. The secondary table of contents, within the document, told me this was exactly what I was looking for. It covered the governing law (11-A), coverage and exemptions (11-B), minimum wage (11-E), and overtime (11-F), to name a few.
Employment in California is governed by both federal and state laws. Each system has its own regulatory agency and method of enforcement.
FEDERAL
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), 29 U.S.C. §§ 201-219
The Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor Employment Standards Administration is responsible for administering and enforcing this law.
Title 29 is the U.S. Labor Code. Annotated versions (with case sites, etc.) of the U.S. Code are available on West and Lexis and in hard copy in many libraries, including the UC Hastings Law Library. A non-annotated version is available through the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School.
Other wage and hour labor laws administered by the Wage and Hour Division.
CALIFORNIA
Various provisions of the California Labor Code
Wage Orders promulgated by the Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC)
The IWC lists laws applicable to this area of law here.
In California, the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement is responsible for enforcing these laws.
Deerings publishes annotated versions of California code. It is available in hard copy in many libraries, as well as electronically through Lexis. West publishes a similar code. A non-annotated version is available through the Legislative Counsel of California, this is the official version of California Statutory Law.
One important thing to keep in mind is that the more protective law governs: In any situation where both California and federal laws apply to an employee, an employer must comply with the law that is more protective of the employee. 29 U.S.C. 218(a), Aguilar v. Association for Retarded Citizens, 234 Cal.App.3d 21, 34-35 (4th Dist. 1991).
But the two bodies of law do not always apply identically. The federal and state laws overlap in some ways, but are significantly different in many others, both substantively and procedurally. A first important consideration, therefore, in determining a worker's rights is determining under what laws that particular worker is covered.
fn1 Please note, search terms are surrounded by quotations for ease of reading, the searches themselves did not include the quotation marks, unless otherwise noted.
Vanessa Siino
Advanced Legal Research
Spring 2008 University of California, Hastings College of the Law