As I learned the hard way, these penalties can add up fast, easily reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars for a small company like ours (and millions for larger businesses). The end result is that employers have to enforce onerous labor regulations that often do not benefit employees, or risk getting sued.
For instance, we have employees who start their work day early and don’t necessarily want to stop for lunch at 10 a.m. They would rather wait until their friends take theirlunch breaks, so that they can eat together.
As a family-owned business, we wanted to take employee desires into account, so we used to let them wait to eat — even though state law requires that hourly employees take a half-hour meal period after five hours of work, whether they want to or not.
Then, about two years ago, we were hit with a PAGA lawsuit. A disgruntled former employee had linked up with San Diego trial lawyers who specialize in such suits. Like virtually all companies that find themselves the target of a PAGA or class-action lawsuit, we negotiated a settlement rather than take the risk of losing in court and facing the onerous maximum penalties prescribed by the law.
View Article