Legal Question in Business Law in California

Re: Make Up Time Not Honored

Many people think there is a law covering every aspect of employment relations, especially in the area of pay practices. This is a mistaken impression. The general rule is that the employer must live up to its agreement with the employees. If the agreement is that they get paid once a year, that's legal, and the employee doesn't have a right to be paid every week, month or whatever.

The "contract" covering a particular pay or benefits provision doesn't necessarily have to be written down and signed by employer and employee, however, in order to be enforced. If there is a written policy, a past practice, a general understanding, or whatever, that alone may be deemed to be the contract between the parties as to that particular practice.

So, the bottom line is that a particular practice is 90% of the time not going to be against any law, but failure to honor a practice in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner is likely to be a breach of contract, a civil wrong addressable not through a bureaucrat like the Labor Commissioner, but through private lawsuit.

There are exceptions, but fewer than most people assume.