Jamie Zepeda Labor Contracting v. Dept. of Industrial Relations etc.
Annotate this CaseCalifornia Labor Code section 1197.1 (b) authorized the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (the Division) to issue a citation to an employer if the Division “determines that a person has paid or caused to be paid a wage less than the minimum under applicable law.” The issue this case presented for the Court of Appeal's review centered on whether certain employers, farm labor contractor Jaime Zepeda Labor Contracting, Inc. (Zepeda), and Zepeda’s “client employers,” Anthony Vineyards, Inc. (AVI) and Richard Bagdasarian, Inc. (RBI) (collectively “Employers”), committed minimum wage violations that would support the Division’s issuance of section 1197.1 citations. It was undisputed that the Employers paid all of the employees at issue at least the minimum wage by payday. Nevertheless, the Division contended it properly issued section 1197.1 minimum wage citations because the Employers did not promptly pay the final wages of the employees who were purportedly discharged or deemed by the Division to have quit in accordance with the prompt payment mandates of Labor Code sections 201, 202 and 203. The Division contended that the failure to pay wages on the dates that the employees were discharged or within 72 hours of when they quit subjected the Employers to waiting time penalties under section 203, and constituted independent minimum wage violations that supported the issuance of section 1197.1 citations, even though the Employers paid final wages that were at or above the minimum wage on or before payday, in accordance with the minimum wage law. After review, the Court of Appeal concluded the Division improperly issued the section 1197.1 minimum wage citations to the Employers. Therefore, the the superior court properly issued a peremptory writ of administrative mandate directing the Division to dismiss the citations with prejudice.
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