Legal Question in Employment Law in California

Properly classified 'salaried exempt' employees can be required to work around the clock in theory. That's what 'exempt' means, not subject to time rules or OT payment.

Your issue is whether you are 'properly classified' as salaried exempt, meaning supervisory duties, professional technical, and not simply a white collar clerk or worker bee 'called' exempt to avoid paying OT. If you think you are not 'properly classified' as salaried exempt, feel free to contact me to discuss your rights and remedies to back pay, penalties, OT, etc.

Many employees are salaried who are not legally exempt. They do not clock in and out and are not docked pay if they are 15 minutes over on their lunch hour, but they do log overtime and are paid for it because they do not qualify as exempt from wage and hour orders issued by the Dept. of Industrial Relations. It is perfectly legal to schedule those employees for over 40 hours, as long as they are paid OT for the OT hours. Other employee's are legally exempt from the wage and hour orders. They can be scheduled 24/7 in theory, until they quit or are fired for going home. There would be an issue as to whether that was a just cause termination for unemployment purposes (and the company would lose) but it would not be illegal to require that schedule or to terminate an employee who left, and no overtime would be owed. The bottom line, however, is that the law only governs overtime pay and meal and rest periods, not schedules. If the company wants to pay the OT or work their exempt employees until they quit, they legally can require any schedule.