California Employment News: Time to Do Away With Rounding Policies
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) mandates that employers compensate employees for each hour worked. Nonetheless, the Department of Labor guidance permits rounding of employee time punches so long as, among other things,...more
For decades, the Department of Labor (DOL) has recognized the impracticability of requiring Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) nonexempt employees to clock in exactly at the beginning of their scheduled shifts. In most...more
Kuciemba v. Victory Woodworks Inc., 14 Cal. 4th 993 (2023)... Adolph v. Uber Technologies Inc., 14 Cal. 5th 1104 (2023)... Woodworth v. Loma Linda University Medical Center, No. E072704, 2023 WL 4701976 (Cal. Ct. App. July...more
For decades, many employers have rounded non-exempt employees’ work time when calculating their compensation. Maybe they have rounded employee work time to the nearest 10 minutes, maybe to the nearest quarter hour, but they...more
The California Court of Appeal issued a blow to employers this week by taking yet another step toward eliminating their ability to round employee time punches. Although the California Supreme Court will ultimately weigh in,...more
As we wrote about previously here, in October 2022, the Sixth District of the California Court of Appeal in Camp v. Home Depot U.S.A., Inc., 84 Cal.App.5th 638 (2022), ignored a decade of precedent and found Home Depot’s...more
Recent case law has brought time rounding policies into question. In this episode of California Employment News, Meagan Bainbridge and Katie Collins review the California Court of Appeal’s recent ruling in Camp v. Home Depot,...more
Rounding is the practice of capturing time entries on a time clock and converting them to the closest five, ten, or fifteen minute equivalent. For example, both entries at 8:58 and 9:04 may be converted to 9:00 a.m. A recent...more
An employer’s quarter-hour rounding policy did not comply with California law because the company could and did track the exact time in minutes that employees worked each shift—but did not pay them for it, according to a...more
This week, the California Court of Appeal effectively shut the door on rounding time records in California. In Camp v. Home Depot, the court held that the employer’s facially neutral rounding policy violated California law by...more
Over the past decade, California employers have reasonably relied on consistent rulings from courts as well as state and federal administrative agencies upholding the validity of time rounding systems as long as they are...more
California Courts of Appeal have historically permitted fair and neutral rounding policies which, over a period of time, result in a net surplus of compensation and benefit to the employees collectively. However, Camp v. Home...more
The Sixth District California Court of Appeal held that despite evidence of neutrality of a rounding policy, the employer did not meet its burden of proof to show employees were properly compensated for all hours worked....more
In California, it has long been the rule that an employer is entitled to use a rounding policy “if the rounding policy is fair and neutral on its face and ‘it is used in such a manner that it will not result, over a period of...more
On October 24, 2022, the Sixth District issued a decision in in Camp v. Home Depot, handing employees a major win in the wage and hour arena by holding that Home Depot’s practice of rounding hourly employees’ total daily...more
The California Court of Appeal issued a decision this week that could spell the end of time rounding in California. In Camp v. Home Depot U.S.A. Inc., No. H049033, 2022 WL 13874360 (Oct. 24, 2022), the court held that, where...more
The California Court of Appeal, in Cirrincion v. American Scissor Lift, Inc. recently upheld a trial court order denying class certification in a wage and hour class action. Since class certification is so often granted, this...more
As technology has advanced, employers routinely rely on electronic timekeeping software to ensure accurate record keeping. Such software often includes a setting to round employees’ time (typically to the nearest quarter...more
On February 25, 2021, the California Supreme Court issued an important ruling affecting meal period compliance and rounding policies. In Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC, the Court held: (1) Meal periods cannot be rounded, even...more
For the past decade, many California employers have lawfully used neutral rounding systems to compensate employees. Rounding is the practice of adjusting an employees’ recorded time worked to the nearest preset increment for...more
California employers may not apply time-rounding procedures to meal period time entries, based on a recent California Supreme Court decision. ...more
I had planned to focus this month’s installment of “Time Is Money” on the practice of rounding timeclock entries, addressing the history behind the practice as well as factors that make rounding today a riskier proposition...more
California law generally requires that employers provide nonexempt employees an uninterrupted nonworking 30-minute meal period to begin before the end of the fifth hour of work. These requirements apply even if the employee...more
Wage and hour claims, particularly those asserting class or collective violations, comprise a significant percentage of employment law claims across the country, and Wisconsin is no exception. Improper rounding and other...more
In its recent Donohue v. AMN Services, LLC decision, the California Supreme Court held that employers can not “round” employee time for purposes of calculating statutorily mandated meal breaks. It also held that records...more