FLSA vs. State law approach

Amyl

We have employees in many states, with corporate HQ and a large bulk of the employees in California. We are currently auditing our employee classifications and the question has come up re using California IWC rules (more onerous in almost every instance) to do all the classifications regardless of where the job is located, vs. applying IWC rules only to the California positions, while applying FLSA and/or the relevant state standards to positions outside of California. We were wondering what other companies that are similarly situated do. We have about 5,000 employees total, of which 1/5th are in California, and the others scattered throughout the US.

Gillian

There are pro's and con's to both. Years ago I was in that situation and California was a stand - alone. I would probably still go that way given all the extra overtime, break penalties etc. that the IWC orders provide. If you did apply California standards to all the other places and a supervisor violated them, at least you wouldn't get a wage claim out of it.