California flex time

pamelah

I need help for a question regarding California.

We have employees who work a 4-10 workweek in California. We fall under Wage Order 4. In the wage order it talks about making up time by substituting one day for another. It is silent on the issue of making up say half a day.

If an employee works half a day on Tuesday and wants to make up the other half on Friday (M-TH workweek) can they do that without the company having to pay overtime?

We looked into the DLSE website and manual and did not see anything - hopefully someone knows of something we did not see.

Thanks for any assistance.:usa flag:

Susan Prince

Thank you for your inquiry. There are three different issues to examine in this situation. The first is making up work time when there is a partial day absence, the second substituting full work days in an alternative workweek schedule, and the third is flextime.

(1) § 513. Makeup work time. According to California law: If an employer approves a written request of an employee to make up work time that is or would be lost as a result of a personal obligation of the employee, the hours of that makeup work time, if performed in the same workweek in which the work time was lost, may not be counted towards computing the total number of hours worked in a day for purposes of overtime requirements specified in Section 510 or 511, except for hours in excess of 11 hours of work in one day or 40 hours in one workweek. An employee shall provide a signed written request for each occasion that the employee makes a request to make up work time pursuant to this section. An employer is prohibited from encouraging or otherwise soliciting an employee to request the employer’s approval to take personal time off and make up the work hours within the same week pursuant to this section.

In other words, employees may make a written request to make up time missed because of personal obligations later in the same workweek without having to be paid overtime for working more than 8 hours in a day. Hours in excess of 11 in a day must be paid at overtime rates even if they are makeup hours. A signed written makeup time request must be submitted for each occasion. Overtime does not have to be paid to employees who made up time in advance of planned time off, but then decided not to take the time off. This exemption does not apply if the employee works more than 40 hours in a week or more than 11 hours in a day. One request every 4 weeks may be submitted if the personal obligation is a recurring fixed event (i.e., 2 hours off on the same day each week for a course or appointment). The employer may deny requests. Employers may inform employees of the makeup time provision, but they are barred from encouraging or soliciting employees to request time off to be made up later in the week.

(2) Substituting full workdays under an alternative workweek schedule:

An employer, at the request of the employee, may substitute 1 day of work for another day of the same length in the shift provided by the alternative workweek agreement on an occasional basis to meet the personal needs of the employee without the payment of overtime. No hours paid at either one and one-half or double the regular rate of pay will be included in determining when 40 hours have been worked for the purpose of computing overtime compensation.

(3) Flextime

A flexible work schedule allows some employees to begin their workday earlier in the morning, and others to begin their workday a little later in the morning/workday.

pamelah

Thank you very much. I am working on the California portion of my SHRM, but this stuff is confusing.**==