The Huprich Law Firm handles employment cases from all industries, but three groups keep coming to our doors with similar issues. These groups are the Health Care and Science Workers, the Technology Workers, and the Commission Workers. Each group has its own version of the trap: employer-protecting contracts, complicated pay formulas that only HR employees can describe, and a working population that either does not have time or legal expertise to challenge either of the two. Working with an attorney who has one’s industry knowledge means that there is no need to educate the professional.
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Few sectors in California employ as many people, in as many different kinds of roles, as science and healthcare. Huprich Law Firm has made note of the professionals that seek their services most frequently:
These vocations have proven to maintain formidable popularity and great remuneration, although with the same reasonability that fuels success at work, they have become notorious for conflicts at work.
Four bodies of law show up again and again in cases involving science and healthcare employees.
Under the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), an employer cannot make decisions about your job based on:
A termination tied to any of these characteristics is exactly the kind of firing FEHA was written to stop.
The California Whistleblower Protection Act was enacted due to the fact that scientific and medical workers are often the first ones to spot something wrong. It covers the following types of claims:
If the employer finds out about any of these actions and retaliates with termination, demoting, reducing wages, or making working conditions harsher, he has violated the law for a second time.
Physicians, research scientists, and senior clinical staff are rarely at-will in the traditional sense. Their contracts typically pin down:
When an employer ignores one of these terms, the dispute usually plays out as a breach of contract claim rather than a standard termination case.
Long shifts are common in this field, which is exactly why wage and hour law matters so much here. California guarantees professional employees:
A worker who is shorted on any of these can go directly to the Division of Labor Standards and Enforcement (DLSE) or pursue the claim through a private lawsuit.
California gives employees more than one path to a remedy once their rights have been violated. Depending on the situation, that path might include:
A successful claim can put more than a paycheck back in an employee’s pocket. Depending on the case, compensation may cover:
If you ask most people which industry they think defines California, many will answer technology, claiming it is a winner almost all the time. Silicon Valley is always in the news for numerous technological breakthroughs, but companies such as Apple, Google, Meta, Space X, and Tesla contribute to technology being a very extensive industry in California.
While technology may seem as though it’s constantly moving at the speed of light and is always under pressure, it is still subject to employment laws just like any other industry (if sometimes not very much). In case you feel something is not right at your tech job, it’s wise to consult with a legal expert to find out whether your employer’s behavior is legally appropriate.
The California Employment Development Department (EDD) puts the tech workforce at over 1.8 million people, roughly one in ten workers statewide. That workforce is spread across:
and includes job titles such as:
A specialized skill set does not put anyone outside the reach of California employment law. It just changes what the disputes tend to look like.
A tech employee has the same legal footing as an employee anywhere else, but the way that plays out looks different, because so much of the industry runs on individually negotiated contracts rather than standard offer letters.
A typical tech employment agreement covers:
When an employer disregards any of these terms, that is a breach of contract, and Huprich Law Firm can help pursue what the contract promised.
The Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) applies in tech offices the same way it applies everywhere else, barring adverse decisions based on:
An employer’s obligation does not stop at avoiding discrimination itself. It also has to prevent it, respond to it, and never punish an employee for speaking up about it.
California’s wage and hour rules apply to salaried tech employees just as much as hourly ones. Every employee is entitled to:
The same law that sets these protections also gives employees a way to enforce them. A tech worker whose rights were violated may be able to recover:
A claim does more than recover money. It puts a practice on the record that an employer might otherwise keep getting away with. That is not a small decision to make, and Huprich Law Firm handles that process alongside you from the first call.
Quota pressure is part of the job in sales, and most salespeople accept that as the cost of the career. What they should not have to accept is an employer who changes the math after the work is already done.
Huprich Law Firm sees the same handful of tricks used to shortchange commissioned employees, over and over:
Recognize a few of these? There may be real money owed to you.
California Labor Code Section 1194 sets a floor: at least the state minimum wage for every hour worked, plus time and a half for anything past 8 hours in a day or 40 in a week. No agreement can waive that floor. When an employer falls short, the law allows the employee to recover the unpaid wages, interest, attorney’s fees, and costs through a civil claim.
That said, two narrow exemptions can take a salesperson out of some or all of these protections:
This exemption applies to an employee who:
Meet that definition, and neither minimum wage nor overtime applies. But the employer, not the employee, carries the burden of proving the exemption fits (Ramirez v. Yosemite Water Co. (1999) 20 Cal.4th 785).
Picture a true outside salesperson as someone knocking on doors to sell appliances directly to homeowners. A job title alone does not settle the question. Courts dig into the actual job description and how the employee really spends their time (Duran v. U.S. Bank National Assn. (2014) 59 Cal.4th 1).
This exemption requires both of the following to be true:
The test is applied pay period by pay period. An employer cannot borrow from a strong month to cover a weak one and claim the exemption anyway (Peabody v. Time Warner Cable, Inc. (2014) 59 Cal.4th 662). Shuffling wages between pay periods like that would also run afoul of California Labor Code Section 204, which requires pay at least twice a month.
The commission itself has to be real, not a bonus wearing a commission’s name to dodge overtime, and the employee has to actually be selling something. An auto mechanic paid a cut of the service bill, for instance, is not a commissioned salesperson, because fixing cars is not selling them (Keyes Motors, Inc. v. Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (1987) 197 Cal.App.3d 557).
A car salesperson earning a cut of each sale is the textbook example. If commissions make up more than half of what they earn, overtime pay may not apply, though minimum wage and meal and rest breaks still do (Vaquero v. Stoneledge Furniture LLC (2017) 9 Cal.App.5th 98).
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