California Construction Trucking Association (CCTA)

The Act requires employers to give covered, non-exempt employees a customized notice at the time of hire with the following specific information about their wages and other employment-related information upon hire:

• The rate or rates of pay and basis thereof, whether paid by the hour, shift, day, week, salary, piece, commission, or otherwise, including any rates for overtime, as applicable;
• Allowances, if any, claimed as part of the minimum wage, including meal or lodging allowances;
• The regular payday designated by the employer in accordance with the requirements of this code;
• The name of the employer, including any “doing business as” names used by the employer;
• The physical address of the employer’s main office or principal place of business, and a mailing address, if different;
• The telephone number of the employer;
• The name, address, and telephone number of the employer’s workers’ compensation insurance carrier;
• Any other information the Labor Commissioner deems material and necessary.

All non-exempt, private sector employees are covered by the Act for purposes of receiving the notice, except employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement that provides premium overtime rates and an hourly wage that is at least 30 per cent more than minimum wage. The notice must be provided to employees “in the language the employer normally uses to communicate employment-related information with the employee.”

On December 29, 2011, the Labor Commissioner issued a template Wage Disclosure

Notice form that employers may use, found at http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/Governor_signs_Wage_Theft_Protection_Act_of_2011.html.

Going forward, if any of the above required notice information changes, the employer must provide the employees notice of these changes within seven days by: (1) providing a written amendment to the statement; (2) issuing an entirely new notice; or, (3) via paycheck stub, if the updated information is contained on the paycheck stub.

The Labor Commissioner also posted responses to Frequently Asked Questions

(“FAQs”at: http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/FAQs-NoticeToEmployee.html.

Although the Act states that the notice must be given to new employees at the time of hire, the original version of the Labor Commissioner’s FAQs stated that employers were required to give the notice to all current employees. On January 3, 2012, the Labor Commissioner deleted the reference to current employees in the FAQs. Accordingly, the notice does not need to be provided to current employees.

In the FAQs, the Labor Commissioner states that the notice must be a standalone document. This is quite important as some clients have indicated a desire to simply put the information in an offer letter and the statute was silent on this issue.

The FAQs are also very specific about requirements for electronic notice. If your company provides the notice electronically, there needs to be a system where the worker can acknowledge the receipt of the notice and print out a copy of the notice.

Another new point from the FAQs is that a signed notice does not constitute a voluntary written agreement between the employer and employee to credit any meals or lodging against the minimum wage. Any such voluntary written agreement must be contained in another separatedocument.

The FAQs failed to address many, significant unanswered questions about the notice form. These include: what does it mean for an employee to be employed pursuant to a “written” or “oral” agreement and what is meant by the Labor Commissioner’s reference to businesses or entities that “administer wages or benefits.”

Accordingly, please contact us if you have any questions about how these or any other provisions of the notice apply to your company’s particular situation.