Disclaimer: Information in this document is provided for convenience and not as legal advice. You and your business are solely responsible for verifying with your attorney and/or HR expert that all information is up to date and accurate. Deputy can create custom Pay Conditions and Stress Profiles as a Professional Service.
Overview
Deputy offers two versions California labor law. You can apply the labor law by Navigating to the Employee's Profile -> Employment -> Pay Details and selecting from the list of Pay Rates.
Pay Conditions
Base Rate and Overtime
- Receive their base hourly rate for any hours that do not fall into any other scenarios.
- Receive 1.5x their hourly base rate for any hours worked over 8 hours in a workday.
- Receive 1.5x their hourly base rate for any hours worked over 40 hours in a workweek.
- Receive 1.5x their hourly base rate for any hours worked 8 hours or less on the 7th consecutive day in a workweek.Receive 2x their hourly base rate for any hours worked over 12 hours in a workday.
- Receive 2x their hourly base rate for any hours worked more than 8 hours on the 7th consecutive day in a workweek.
Meal and Rest Breaks
- Employers of California employees must provide a 10-minute paid rest period for every four hours worked or major fraction thereof. If they fail to do so the employer must pay the Employee one extra hour of pay at the Employee’s regular hourly rate.
- Employers of California employees must provide a 30-minute meal period for every 5 hours worked or major fraction thereof. If they fail to do so the employer must pay the Employee one extra hour of pay at the Employee’s regular hourly rate.
- If the shift is greater than 5 but less than or equal to 6 hours, employees may waive the meal period. If waived, employees are not entitled to any penalty pay.
Meal and Rest Breaks
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Employees who earn the minimum wage will receive additional pay known as a “split shift premium” when their schedule includes a split shift. A split shift is two shifts in one day that are separated by more than 1 hour of unpaid time.
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Employees will receive 1.5x their hourly rate of pay for hours worked on any public holidays designated as such by the employer in the schedule.
Missed Break Premium Pay
Deputy allows employers to track missed break premium pay where employees answer "No" to the missed break attestation questions above. For employees with meal break waivers, Deputy recommends using the "California Labor Law w/ Meal Break Waiver" version of the pay condition so that missed break penalty pay is not applied in the case of a waiver.
Missed Rest Breaks
Based off of the answer to the rest break attestation question, Deputy will apply a missed rest break premium of 1 hour at the Employee’s base rate per workday in the following conditions:
| Shift length (hh:mm:ss) | Breaks owed | Premiums owed if not taken |
| <3:30:00 hours | 0 | 0 |
| 3:30:01 - 6:30:00 hours | 1 | 1 |
| 6:30:01 - 10:30:00 hours | 2 | 1 |
| 10:30:01 - 14:30:00 hours | 3 | 1 |
Example
Missed Meal Breaks
Based off of the answer to the meal break attestation question, Deputy will apply a meal break premium of 1 hour at the Employee’s base rate per workday in the following conditions (assuming no Waiver of Meal Breaks exists):
| Shift length (hh:mm:ss) | Breaks owed | Premiums owed if not taken |
| <5:00:01 hours | 0 | 0 |
| 5:00:01 - 10:00:00 hours | 1 | 1 |
| 10:00:01 - 15:00:00 hours | 2 | 1 |
| 15:00:01 - 20:00:00 hours | 3 | 1 |
Example
Split Shift Premium Pay
When an employee works a spit shift, they may be owed a Split Shift Premium. If the split shift extends into the next workday, only the hours worked on the Start Date of the shift count towards the Premium. A split shift is two shifts separated by more than 1 hour in the same workday.
Please note: Split shifts ARE NOT GUARANTEED to work with auto-approval of shifts in Deputy.
Reporting the Split Shift Premium
The amount of split shift premium pay owed depends upon the employee's pay rate. In Deputy, the Split Shift Premium is calculated in Units. Each Unit is intended to represent 1 hour at minimum wage:
Defining a Workday and Workweek
Workday in Deputy defaults to a calendar day from midnight to 11:59 pm.
Workweek in Deputy defaults to a calendar week from Sunday through Saturday.
End of Shift Attestation Questions
Both versions of Deputy's California pay conditions allow employers to use a final attestation question to document whether employees have been provided all required rest and meal breaks.
Upon clocking out for a shift, the employee is presented with the attestation questions:
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Rest Breaks: "I attest that I took a 10-minute rest break for every 4 hours worked or major fraction thereof."
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Meal Breaks: "I attest that for every 5 hours worked this work period, I took a continuous and uninterrupted meal break of at least 30 minutes."
These questions default to a "Yes" answer, and employees must select "No" to change the default. If the Employee selects “No”, they will be required to fill out a comment explaining why. A "No" answer will trigger missed break premium pay.
IMPORTANT: DO NOT CHANGE THE ATTESTATION QUESTION DEFAULTS OR THIS FEATURE WILL NOT FUNCTION PROPERLY.
Your Two Options for California Labor Law
The new pay conditions are entitled
1. CA Labor Law With Waiver
2. CA Labor Law Without Waiver
Both pay conditions are identical with one exception; the "With Waiver" version of the pay condition is designed for use with employees who have signed a meal break waiver.
CA law allows employees to waive (agree not to take it or receive any penalty pay for missing it) meal breaks for shifts less than 6 hours or shifts less than 12 hours. If the total work period per day for an employee is no more than 6 hours, the meal break may be waived by mutual consent of both the employer and employee. Similarly, if the total hours work is no more than 12 hours, the second meal break may be waived only if the first was not waived.
In the "With Waiver" version of the pay condition, the meal break attestation question will not be asked unless the shift is longer than 6 hours. In the event that an employee is entitled to 2 meal breaks, they are only entitled to waiving one and must take the other.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Deputy apply missed break premiums if the break is not taken at the recommend times during the shift?
No, Deputy only applies a missed break premium if the employee states they were not provided with a break and they were owed a break based upon the length of their shift, and the existence of a waiver.
Does Deputy require employees clock out for all breaks?
No, employees must only clock out for meal breaks as they are unpaid. Employees should be paid for rest breaks. Missed rest break premiums will apply based off the employee's answer to the attestation question.
Why does Deputy always ask the attestation questions for breaks, even if the Employee clocked out for them?
Even though an employee clocks out for a break, Deputy cannot assume that they were relieved of their duties for the entire break period. Therefore, we always require the Employee to answer the questions.
My Employee worked a 10 hour shift without any breaks, but only received 1 Meal Break Premium and 1 Rest Break Premium. Why did they not receive a Premium for each break they missed?
Deputy only applies one of each type of Missed Break Premium per workday.
What types of pay conditions count towards the Split Shift Premium?
ONLY the base rate hours count towards the actual cost of the split shift premium. This means that any Premiums, Overtimes, or any type of multiplied rates are not included in determining the number of units of Split Shift Premium owed.