Workforce Bulletin

California plaintiffs’ lawyers typically bring every type of wage-hour claim they can.  Increasingly, however, they have focused on one type of claim – wage statement violations.

As we have previously written about, bringing class and representative actions under California’s Private Attorneys General Act (“PAGA”) alleging that employers did not fully comply with California’s onerous wage statement laws has become a lucrative practice for the plaintiffs’ bar.  Given the flurry of litigation, it is beneficial for employers that do business in California to review their wage statements to best ensure compliance.

This summer, the Colorado Supreme Court addressed whether employers may implement practices by which employees forfeit accrued, unused vacation pay upon the termination of employment.  In Nieto v. Clark’s Mkt., Inc., 2021 CO 48, 2021 Colo. LEXIS 423 (Colo. June 14, 2021), the Court held that the Colorado Wage Claim Act (“CWCA”) requires employers to pay employees for earned but unused vacation upon the separation of their employment. The requirement applies irrespective of an employment agreement or policy forfeiting an employee’s right to such payment.

In Nieto, the ...

California generally requires that, when employees accrue vacation time during their employment, any accrued but unused vacation time must be paid out at the end of employment.  But so-called “unlimited” vacation policies have generally been understood to be a potential exception to that rule.  Such “unlimited” policies are more accurately referred to as “professional” or “reasonable use” vacation policies, where such policies do not provide for vacation to accrue.  Instead, employees under such policies are allowed to take an unspecified amount of paid time ...