Court of Appeal: Wage Statements Need Not Include Vacation and PTO Balances

Labor Code section 226 explains in detail what information must be included in an itemized wage statement, which must accompany paychecks in California.  Here are the section's requirements:

(1) gross wages earned, 

(2) total hours worked by the employee, except for any employee whose compensation is solely based on a salary and who is exempt from payment of overtime under subdivision (a) of Section 515 or any applicable order of the Industrial Welfare Commission, 

(3) the number of piece-rate units earned and any applicable piece rate if the employee is paid on a piece-rate basis, 

(4) all deductions, provided that all deductions made on written orders of the employee may be aggregated and shown as one item, 

(5) net wages earned, 

(6) the inclusive dates of the period for which the employee is paid, 

(7) the name of the employee and only the last four digits of his or her social security number or an employee identification number other than a social security number, 

(8) the name and address of the legal entity that is the employer and, if the employer is a farm labor contractor, as defined in subdivision (b) of Section 1682, the name and address of the legal entity that secured the services of the employer, and 

(9) all applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period and the corresponding number of hours worked at each hourly rate by the employee and, beginning July 1, 2013, if the employer is a temporary services employer as defined in Section 201.3, the rate of pay and the total hours worked for each temporary services assignment.

The deductions made from payment of wages shall be recorded in ink or other indelible form, properly dated, showing the month, day, and year, and a copy of the statement and the record of the deductions shall be kept on file by the employer for at least three years at the place of employment or at a central location within the State of California. For purposes of this subdivision, “copy” includes a duplicate of the itemized statement provided to an employee or a computer-generated record that accurately shows all of the information required by this subdivision.

Oh, but if you pay a piece rate, you also have to comply with section 226.2:

(a) For employees compensated on a piece-rate basis during a pay
period, the following shall apply for that pay period: * * *  

(2) The itemized statement required by subdivision (a) of Section 226 shall, in addition to the other items specified in that subdivision, separately state the following, to which the provisions of Section 226 shall also be applicable: 

(A) The total hours of compensable rest and recovery periods, the rate of compensation, and the gross wages paid for those periods during the pay period.

(B) Except for employers paying compensation for other nonproductive time in accordance with paragraph (7), the total hours of other nonproductive time, as determined under paragraph (5), the rate of compensation, and the gross wages paid for that time during the pay period.

So, do you see vacation or PTO balances there?  Me neither.  Neither did the Court of Appeal, which rejected the plaintiff's claim in Soto v. Motel 6 Operating LP (opinion here).  The Court wrote:

section 226(a) is highly detailed, containing nine separate categories that must be included on wage statements, and the code section does not identify accrued paid vacation as one of these categories. (See fn. 2, ante.) When a statute omits a particular category from a more generalized list, a court can reasonably infer a specific legislative intent not to include that category within the statute's mandate. (See Blankenship v. Allstate Ins. Co. (2010) 186 Cal.App.4th 87, 94.)
*  *  *  *
[V]acation pay cannot be fairly defined as "gross wages earned" or "net wages earned" under section 226(a)(1) or (a)(5) until the termination of the employment relationship. The employee has vested rights to paid vacation or vacation wages during the time of his employment, but these rights do not ripen and become an entitlement to receive the monetary value of the benefit as wages until the separation date. (Church, supra, at pp. 1576-1577, 1583; see Suastez, supra, 31 Cal.3d at p. 784.) Further, before separation, the amount of vacation pay to which the employee is entitled is not ascertainable. An employee is entitled to obtain the value of unused paid vacation at his or her "final rate." (§ 227.3, italics added.) Because the amount of unused vacation and an employee's final rate may change, an employee's accrued vacation balance depends on the particular circumstances at the employment termination date.

This will help employers not only with claims that vacation / PTO belong on the wage statement, but also with other items not included in section 226.  Section 226 also requires employers to provide a copy of payroll records that include only the above 9 items.  Plaintiff lawyers argue that section 226 requires more than what is listed. This decision in Soto should put that issue to rest. 

One more tip:  employers have to report paid sick leave on the wage statement (or in a separate document) per  Labor Code section 246, subd. (h):

(h) An employer shall provide an employee with written notice that sets forth the amount of paid sick leave available, or paid time off leave an employer provides in lieu of sick leave, for use on either the employee's itemized wage statement described in Section 226 or in a separate writing provided on the designated pay date with the employee's payment of wages.

Therefore, employers that rely on PTO in lieu of mandatory paid sick leave might well have to provide the PTO balance on the wage statement (or in the separate document).  Apparently that was not the case in the Soto case, or no one brought it up.   

Be careful out there.

Court of Appeal: OK to Deduct from Exempt Employees' PTO/Vacation for Partial Day Absences of Any Length

Basic wage-hour principle: With some exceptions, an employee classified as "exempt" under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act is entitled to a full salary for any week in which she / he performs any work.  There are some exceptions allowing for salary deductions. For example, an employer can deduct from an exempt employee's salary for full-day absences for personal pursuits, or full day absences for illness if the employer has a bona fide paid sick leave plan.

The corollary of the above:  It generally is illegal to deduct from "exempt" employees' salaries for missing partial days of work, except in very limited circumstances such as partial day, federal FMLA leave.   The consequences could be invalidation of the exemption.  That statement is true under both federal law (FLSA) and California law.

When employees have vacation or PTO balances, can employers lawfully deduct from them when exempt workers are absent for partial days, and leave the salary intact?  Well, it's a definite yes under federal law. Federal law does not consider vacation / PTO to be "vested," and does not care if employers deduct from those balances for any reason.

Under California law, it's a little trickier.  That is because vacation / PTO are "vested" balances. The argument against allowing deductions is that the exempt employee can work variable hours and is entitled to the full salary. Deducting from PTO is an end-around, which reduces a vested balance of wages otherwise owed, for an absence that the employee is entitled to take without affecting his or her pay.  That's the plaintiffs' bar's argument, but it's not correct.

In 2005, the Court of Appeal decided in Conley v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (2005) 131 Cal.App.4th 260, that California law follows federal law in this area.  However, the PG&E policy provided that exempt employees' partial day absences were subject to a deduction from PTO, only if the absence was longer than 4 hours.  After Conley, the state Division of Labor Standards Enforcement, grudgingly, decided that Conley only authorized deductions from exempt employees' PTO when the absence was more than 4 hours.

Although Conley says nothing about a 4 hour minimum absence, employment lawyers were hesitant to advise employers to go farther than the Conley holding because of the DLSE opinion.  And for good reason....

Enter Lori Rhea, who sued her employer, General Atomics.  General Atomics had a policy allowing deductions from PTO in any amount of time that exempt employees were absent from their jobs for partial days.  Rhea challenged this policy, arguing that Conley was wrongly decided, and that Conley only allowed deductions when her time away from work exceeded 4 hours.  The trial court disagreed, granting General's motion for summary judgment.

The Court of Appeal affirmed:

We do not agree with Rhea's contention that by requiring employees to use vested Annual Leave for partial-day absences, General Atomics is requiring a forfeiture of vested Annual Leave as that term is used in California law. In Suastez and Boothby the vacation time was forfeited because the employer took away the employee's vested vacation time. Suastez and Boothby establish that if an employer provides vacation benefits, the employer "is not free to reclaim it after it has been earned." (Henry v. Amrol, Inc. (1990) 222 Cal.App.3d Supp. 1, 5, italics added.) Here, General Atomics does not take away or reclaim vested Annual Leave when an employee is absent for a partial day; it merely requires that the employee use the Annual Leave under the terms and conditions that it has created. "The law permits an employer to offer new employees no vacation time" (Owen v. Macy's, Inc. (2009) 175 Cal.App.4th 462, 464; see Henry, at p. 6), and it correspondingly also affords an employer the right to control the terms under which vacation time may be exercised by employees. (Suastez, supra, 31 Cal.3d at p. 778, fn. 7 [noting "an employer's right to control the scheduling of its employees' vacations"].) General Atomics has set rules for the exercise of Annual Leave, which it is permitted to do. It has not taken away Annual Leave that has already vested.

The court also rejected the plaintiff's premise that partial day deductions was an impermissible "substitution" of vacation wages for salary that was legally required to be paid:

Put another way, Rhea argues that General Atomics is impermissibly "substituting" the employee's Annual Leave hours for the employee's salary earned during the partial-day absence. * * * * 

[W]e conclude that Rhea's argument fails because she has not established that General Atomics fails to pay all of the wages that it is obligated to pay during an employee's partial-day absence. It is undisputed that General Atomics continues to pay an employee's full salary during a partial-day absence and that the employee fully continues to accrue Annual Leave during a partial-day absence.13 Thus, there is no shortfall in wages or compensation during a partial-day absence that General Atomics "makes up" by requiring an employee to use Annual Leave for that period. This is simply not a situation like in Armenta where employees worked for a period without receiving compensation. Here, General Atomics' employees continue to receive their full compensation even when they are absent for a partial day.

Finally, the Court held that the "four hour" minimum absence is not required under California law:

we find no basis in California law for concluding that an employer is prohibited from requiring exempt employees to use their vacation or leave time when they are absent from work for a partial day. Rhea has not identified any reason for us to distinguish between partial-day absences of different lengths. Instead, she simply points out that the employer's policy in Conley only covered absences of at least four hours. We conclude that regardless of whether the absence is at least four hours or a shorter duration, a requirement that exempt employees use Annual Leave time for a partial-day absence does not violate California law.

So, it is legal to debit an exempt employee's PTO balance for absences of any length.  However, employers must consider the employee relations aspects of doing so.  If an employee works six 12-hour days, are you going to nick that employee's PTO balance for working only 4 hours on the seventh day in the week?

Also, as the court of appeal noticed, General Atomic did not deduct negative PTO balances from final pay upon termination of employment.  You don't do that either, right?  Cuz that would be bad.

The case is Rhea v. General Atomics and the opinion is here.

Court of Appeal: Union Contracts Must Clearly and Unmistakably Waive Rights Under California Vacation Law

It's California employment law 101 that employers must pay out all "vested" vacation time when an employee's employment ends.  No "use it or lose it" and no limits on "carry over" are allowed under Labor Code Section 227.3.  There's an exception in the statute though, which says the statute applies "[u]nless otherwise provided by a collective-bargaining agreement."

What does "otherwise provided" mean?  Well employer Celite had a collective bargaining relationship, and their agreement provided as follows, according to the Court of Appeal:

Celite granted its employees between one and five weeks of vacation annually. Each January, Celite calculated a yearly "vacation allotment" based on each employee's length of employment and the number of hours they worked the year before. [The] employees terminated from Celite were entitled to "receive whatever vacation allotment is due them upon separation."[fn] For 25 years, both Celite and the Union understood this provision to refer to the "vacation allotment" as defined above. Accordingly, Celite paid terminated employees for the vacation time already allotted to them for the year of their termination, but did not pay them the vacation time they had accrued toward the next year's allotment.

The description above suggests that the contract required payment of whatever vacation balance the employee had, but did not take into account "accrual" of vacation during the current year.  Pretty clear to me.

 

Not clear enough for the Court of Appeal, though, and I don't get a vote.  The Court decided that because vacation pay is a significant state-law right, any waiver of 227.3's requirements had to be "clear and unmistakable." Here's what the Court said:

To be clear and unmistakable, a waiver must do more than speak in "'[b]road, general language." (Vasquez, supra, 80 Cal.App.4th at p. 435.) It must be specific, and mention either the statutory protection being waived or, at a minimum, the statute itself. (Accord, Hoover v. American Income Life Ins. Co. (2012) 206 Cal.App.4th 1193, 1208.) The Agreements here neither mention pro rata vacation pay nor cite section 227.3. Celite points out that the Agreements "affirmatively address" vacation payments upon termination. But discussing a topic while at the same time saying nothing about the statutory right at issue does not affect a clear and unmistakable waiver of that right.

So, please check your union contracts and either negotiate a clear provision that waives Section 227.3 expressly and, preferably, quotes the statute.  This is why California release agreements quote Civil Code Section 1542, in case you've ever wondered about that.

On the bright side, the Court of Appeal decided the employer did not act "willfully" by following the collective bargaining agreement and, therefore, was not on the hook for "waiting time" penalties.  The court said that this was the first opinion deciding the standard for waivers under Section 227.3, and so the employer's mistake of law was not "willful."

Some times I wonder what all those class action plaintiff lawyers are doing after Brinker and Dukes v. Walmart put a damper on things.  (Ok, not really).  Well, here is the Court of Appeal riding to the rescue. 

It may be that the California or even U.S. Supreme Court may review this case, but the odds are long. If this case stays on the books, all union contracts prescribing a vacation payout provision that is less generous than Section 227.3 are subject to attack.  Make with the bargaining, employers.

The case is Choate v. Celite Corporation, and the opinion is here.

Court of Appeal: What's a Vacation?

Some companies give paid "sabbaticals" to long term employees. I am jealous of people who work for those companies.

Eric Paton worked for Advanced Micro Devices for seven years before he resigned.  He then sued AMD, claiming the sabbatical that he had not yet earned had "vested" during his entire employment, like vacation.  Therefore, he claimed, he was entitled to a proportional amount of sabbatical pay upon his termination of employment.  His lawsuit is a class action, brought on behalf of some 1400 former employees who had earned portions of their sabbaticals.

Preposterous, you say? Not so fast, said the court of appeal.

To figure out whether the sabbatical is vested vacation, which must be paid out upon termination under Labor Code Section 227.3, the court came up with a definition of "vacation:"

It is paid time off that accrues in proportion to the length of the employee's service, is not conditioned upon the occurrence of any event or condition, and usually does not impose conditions upon the employee's use of the time away from work.

Thus, consistent with the employment lawyer's understanding of vacation, holidays and sick days are not vacation because they are "conditioned upon the occurrence" of sickness or holidays.  Paid days off that do not require a condition to occur (like PTO and floating holidays) tend to fit within this definition.

The court then considered what is a true sabbatical.  The court borrowed from a test the state Division of Labor Standards Enforcement developed, and added an additional criterion:

First, leave that is granted infrequently tends to support the assertion that the leave is intended to retain experienced employees who have devoted a significant period of service to the employer. Every seven years is the traditional frequency and it seems an appropriate starting point for assessing corporate sabbaticals, as well. In many cases, an interval of seven years would be long enough for an employee to gain experience and demonstrate expertise that an employer might want to retain. Greater or lesser frequency could be appropriate depending upon the industry or particular company involved.

Second, the length of the leave should be adequate to achieve the employer's purpose. Since we are concerned here with unconditional sabbaticals given for the purpose of reenergizing the employee then, as the Labor Commissioner suggested, the length of the leave should be longer than that “normally” offered as vacation. Since regular vacation time may be used for rest, a sabbatical ought to provide the extended time off work that regular vacation does not.

Third, a legitimate sabbatical will always be granted in addition to regular vacation. . . .Because an employer could offer a minimal vacation plan and reward senior staff with sabbaticals as a way to avoid the financial liability of a more generous vacation plan, the employer's regular vacation policy should be comparable to the average vacation benefit offered in the relevant market.

A fourth factor is one that is implicit in the DLSE test but is not called out specifically. Since a sabbatical is designed to retain valued employees, then a legitimate sabbatical program should incorporate some feature that demonstrates that the employee taking the sabbatical is expected to return to work for the employer after the leave is over.

Applying this test, the court decided that AMD's plan raised a triable issue of fact regarding whether it was a true sabbatical or deferred vacation. The court's central concern was the purpose of establishing the program:  is it just added vacation for long term employees, or is it an incentive for employees to remain employed with AMD and improve their productivity upon return to work (sabbatical).  So, the court remanded the case for trial.

The decision is Paton v. Advanced Micro Devices and the opinion is here.