What is reporting-time pay in California?

California workers have additional protections regarding workplace pay than employees in other states. One of those protections deals with reporting-time pay.

Below is some important information about workers’ rights and responsibilities to be paid for reporting to work.

What is meant by reporting-time pay?

Employees have a duty to show up ready and available to work at their scheduled time. However, there can be times when there is not enough work to be done to justify the employer paying their full crew for a day’s work.

Inevitably, some employees will get “cut” and sent home. But when this occurs, the employees must get paid for at least two and potentially as many as four hours at their scheduled pay rate.

But there are exceptions

There are three circumstances where these pay rules do not apply. They are:

• An Act of God occurs, or some circumstances are not controlled by the employer
• Businesses are shuttered temporarily upon advice from civil authorities or there are threats to the business or its employees
• There is a failure of the public utilities

Under those conditions, no California employer is required to give workers reporting pay.

Two additional caveats

When workers must report to the job site for a second time on the same workday but have less than two hours of work to perform when they return again, they are guaranteed pay for at least two hours at their usual pay rate.

When determining overtime pay, reporting-time pay does not count toward the total hours worked.

Were you cheated out of your reporting pay?

If you believe that your employer failed to pay you the full amount owed to you for reporting to work as scheduled but not being allowed to complete your shift, you may want to seek guidance on how to move forward with a reporting-pay claim.