What is the Fair Labor Standards Act?

If you are employed in California, you should know that there are different laws and regulations governing what your employment relationship. Some laws clearly dictate specific things that an employer must do. One of these laws is called the Fair Labor Standards Act.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the Fair Labor Standards Act provides guidance and requirements surrounding different elements of employee compensation and associated recordkeeping including minimum wages and overtime payments. Under the FLSA, your employer must keep detailed records of every date you are paid and what work period that pay date covered, with a notation about the time and day on which the work period began. The details must include how much you earned in regular wages as well as overtime, if any. The number of weekly and daily hours worked should be included as well as your standard hourly rate if you earned overtime.

Your hours worked may include time at your job, not simply time spent performing a certain task. A single workweek must include an exact seven days and 168 hours in consecutive order. What day and time your workweek begins on can be determined at your employer's discretion. Any benefits, exemptions and wages must be applied to individual workweeks. Never should overtime be calculated based upon more than one workweek at a time. 

This information is not intended to provide legal advice but is instead meant to give employed California residents an overview of some things required by the Fair Labor Standards Act.