Orange County Employment Lawyer Blog

My Orange County Law Firm receives a voluminous amount of calls regarding this issue. The answer is, It depends. If your employer is letting you go (regardless of the reason), your final paycheck must be given to you immediately (i.e., your last day of work). If you are quitting without giving notice, your final paycheck must be given to you within 72 hours. If you are quitting with at least 72 hours advance notice, your final paycheck must be given to you on your last day of work. If your employer claims you owe him/her money, he cannot refuse to pay your final wages and he/she cannot deduct the amount he/she claims you owe from your paycheck this is an unlawful deduction from pay. Your employer must go through the legal process for collecting money as he/she would with a non-employee. If your paycheck is late, you may collect Labor code penalties from your employer which amounts to one day's pay for each day your paycheck is late up to 30 days.

Your final paycheck should include generally, all wages owed through your last day of work. This includes all hourly wages or salary, a pro-rata share of any accrued and unused vacation pay or paid time-off, and any other leave which can be used unconditionally by the employee. This would also include tips. Your employer cannot compel you to sign away your legal rights in a release or waiver in exchange for earned wages.

I previously discussed California's more common wage and hour penalties and their respective remedies in a previous Labor Code Penalties post. In this post, I will discuss in greater detail what is commonly referred to as an "Itemized Wage Statement Penalty" or IWS penalty.

While working for any employer, every employee must receive wage statements that are properly itemized, which means the pay stub must contain certain specific items of information, consisting of the following nine items:

• gross wages earned,


• total hours worked by the employee,


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


• all deductions,


• net wages earned,


• the inclusive dates of the period for which the employee is paid,


• the name of the employee and the last four digits of his or her social security number,


• the name and address of the legal entity that is the employer, and


• all applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period and the corresponding number of hours worked at each hourly rate by the employee.

An employer's failure to provide pay check with stubs containing this information may be liable for an itemized wage statement penalty. Such a penalty results in a penalty of $50 for the first violation, $100 for each subsequent violation - up to $4000 per employee.