Orange County Employment Lawyers Blog

Elon Musk is a billionaire investor who is generally known as being somewhat eccentric.  His primary investments are Tesla, which manufactures high-end electric cars, and Space X, the private space company developing rockets to carry people and cargo into a low-earth orbit and to rendezvous with the International Space Station.

According to recent news article from the Daily Caller, Musk just settled a lawsuit with thousands of Space X employees who filed a class action suit in which they alleged they were underpaid and overworked.  The settlement was in the amount of $4 million.  Each employee will receive at least $500, with some receiving many times that amount, depending upon his or her specific claims and damages. Continue Reading ›

For a variety of reasons, American workers are not showing up in droves to pick crops.  As we have seen across the country, when trying to fill tens of thousands of harvest-related jobs, it is rare to see more than a small handful of Americans apply for these positions.  Even if American workers do sign up, most of them quit before the end of the harvest season.  This means workers who are brought to this country on agricultural visas do these jobs, or these jobs are the jobs that are done by undocumented workers.

While the current presidential administration said it plans to stop these visa programs, despite the fact the Trump Organization personally uses these workers on its various properties, and the administration also continues to crack down on undocumented workers, this creates a serious problem.  Either these workers will continue to do the crop harvesting jobs, or the country will switch to importing all produce. Continue Reading ›

According to a recent news article from Business Insurance, two employers in California have just been sentenced to prison following convictions involving workers’ compensation violations. Prosecutors have stated that one employer, a licensed contractor, did not have workers’ compensation as required to protect his employees in case of an accident.

Anyone who has ever worked in any type of employment setting has probably seen the workers’ rights poster that is handing in the break room or next to the copy machine.  This poster, while you may not give it much thought, lists the important right afforded to by your by your employer pursuant to state, local, and federal law. This includes your right to minimum wage and your right to overtime pay in most situations. Continue Reading ›

When an employer does not pay his or her employees all of the money and benefits that they are rightfully owed, this is known as wage theft.  According to a recent news article from Pasadena Star News, wage theft is a serious problem in California.

The worst part is that the employees who are victims of wage theft are often the lowest paid or minimum wage workers, so this creates an even greater hardship on people who are working desperately so they can take care of themselves and their families.  To get an understanding of how big the problem has become in our area, a recent study from the Economic Policy Institute shows that around $2 billion per year is stolen due to minimum wage violations alone. Continue Reading ›