Legal Question in Employment Law in California
We are a Califonia employer and have an employee who works off site. They continually forget to report their hours worked at the end of each pay period, despite repeated warnings. If they forget again and we do not remind them, can we process payroll as usual, and not pay them since they failed to report any hours? If they then reported their hours after payroll has been processed, would we be required to pay them the hours on the next pay period? We will do whatever is legal, but are really tired of having to remind this guy to turn in his hours every single week.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Unfortunately the law here is very employee friendly. If you know he worked, you have to pay him each pay period. If you make a good faith estimate of hours worked, it is enough. You also can adjust it to the correct hours in a future pay period, but you can't just not pay him in the pay period at all. The theory is that if this problem is so persistent that you cannot run your business that way, you are free to fire them, but not to withhold pay when you know they worked for you.
I agree with Mr. McCormick. It is the employer's legal responsibility to keep track of it employees' work hours. It would not be a defense to a wage claim to argue the employee failed to report his hours worked. He must be paid no less than twice a month for the hours worked. Read California Labor Code section 204. As an employer, you should be familiar with it and adhere to it.
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