Legal Question in Business Law in California

I was laid off almost 3 months ago (company closed), and got my last paycheck but never received my vacation days I never used. I usually get paid out on my anniversary date, which was a week before we got laid off. I went to the California Labor Board and filed a complaint. 3 weeks later (24 calendar days to be exact) I got my vacation pay. I have a labor board hearing coming up. Will they just discuss the vacation pay they owed (which was already paid), but because of them not paying me right away I had some financial hardship. I wanted to know if the penalties owed will be discussed at this hearing and if I win the case how long before they have to pay or will it have to go to a hire court? Also, do I have entitlement to it since it was only vacation pay that they didn't pay? I really want to pursue it because it's close over $5K.

Also, I got a phone call from someone who worked at the place that was trying to convince me to settle outside of the labor board hearing. Should I take the offer or go to the hearing?


Asked on 8/08/09, 1:02 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Bryan Whipple Bryan R. R. Whipple, Attorney at Law

First, here's the applicable law. Labor Code section 227.3 contains the basic law requiring an employer to paya discharged employee the value of any accrued vacation. This law does not, however, in and of itself call for any penalties, and if it did, they would be recovered by the Labor Commissioner, not the former employee.

All that is changed by the 2004 addition to the Labor Code of the so-called Private Attorney General Act, which allows an aggrieved employee or former employee to initiate a proceeding before the Labor Commission or in court, and to recover certain fees. See Labor Code sections 2698 through 2699.5 for the text of the PAGA. It is rather long and complex.

The PAGA was interpreted by the Court of Appeal in a recent case to permit an employee to obtain a $500 civil penalty from the employer, after a hearing. The lengthy decision was in a case called Amaral v. Cintas Corp. No. 2 (2008) reported at 163 Cal.App.4th 1157, with the most relevant part at pages 1206-1207.

So, I guess the answer is your upside seems to be $500 if you win at the hearing, zero if you lose; there could be other factors as well that I don't know about, such as whether the employer's conduct was wilful (intentional) or an accident (careless).

Any further answer I could make would be very speculative. This is a new area of law. If you decide to go to the hearing, you should familiarize yourself with the Labor Code sections and the Amaral case, and you may find yourself educating both the employer and the hearing officer on this subject.

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Answered on 8/08/09, 1:46 pm


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