California wage-and-hour law clearly states that any hour an employee spends performing work on behalf of the organization, or work that the organization knew or had reason to know was being performed by the employee, is considered hours worked and therefore deemed compensable time, regardless of where the work was performed (with some limitations).
The Labor Commissioner has adopted the federal regulations permitting the practice of computing working time by rounding to the nearest five minutes, or one-tenth or one-quarter of an hour. Such rounding is acceptable as long as it is applied both ways (for both employee and organization) so as not to result, over a period of time, in failure to compensate employees properly for all time they have actually worked.
Key considerations regarding compensable hours are outlined below.
California Industrial Welfare Commission (IWC) Orders require that employers pay nonexempt employees for certain unworked but regularly scheduled time, in addition to the hours the employee actually works. See, IWC Orders 1-16, Section 5. Such payments are known as reporting-time pay. The following are specific requirements for reporting-time pay:
Each workday an employee is required to report to work but is not put to work or is furnished with less than half of his or her usual or scheduled day’s work, the employee must be paid for half the usual or scheduled day’s work, but in no event for less than two hours or more than four...
On Friday, April 10, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) has agreed to pay just over $17 million to resolve allegations that ...