Q: Can my employer pay me for a half days work Can a bonus amount be used in the calculation for minimum salary of $54,08

A: A properly classified exempt employee is paid a salary in exchange for their work. Whether that employee works one hour or fifteen hours, the employee is entitled to the same salary. It is not lawful to cut your pay when you work less than some defined number of hours.

That said, it is lawful for an employer to pay you no money for a day when you do not work at all. It is also lawful to take money from any pool of PTO to cover hours less than 8 in a day in order to maintain your daily salary amount. However, if there is no PTO to cover those missing hours, your employer is still required to pay the full salary amount.

Importantly, if you are not being paid double the minimum wage assuming an 8 hour day then you cannot be properly classified as an exempt employee. This half-time scheme may well mean you are not properly classified.

As to bonuses, California does not have any provision allowing bonuses, commissions, and incentives to be counted in reaching the minimum salary thresholds for exempt status.

Good luck to you.

A: Wow, a lot of issues. First, if your employer cuts your salary to $90.00 because you worked 5 hours, they may have cut you to below the Salaried Exempt minimum pay requirement, which is double minimum wage for a 40 hour week. If your employer has more than 25 employees, the minimum wage is $11.00, double is $22.00. Employer must pay you a minimum of $880.00 per week/ $1760 for a 2 week pay period, $45,760.00 annual. At $180, you are getting $22.50 per hour, $900 per week. If they cut you to $90 on one day that you work 5 hours, your weekly dropped to $810, and you lost exempt status. Now they have problems if you are working through lunch or they fail to allow lunch before the 5th hour, and you work a full day. If you work any more than 8 hours during the day on a week they cut your pay, you are entitled to OT premium pay and you are entitled to pay at your regular rate $22.50- for all hours worked up to 8 in a day and 40 in a week.

So lets say you work as follows M-9, T-9, W-4, T-8, F-12 and S-8. Because W was only 4 hours they cut $90, and pay you $810 for the week. You have a total of 50 hours but you have a total of 6 hours of daily Overtime and an additional 4 hours of weekly overtime. You would be entitled to $1237.50. If you got paid less than $880, you lost exempt status for that week. You are entitled to an additional $427.50, because you lost the exempt status when they cut your pay for the 5 hour day. If you worked through lunch every day, you get an additional 5 hours premium pay for missed meal breaks, and if you got no rest breaks and additional 6 hours missed rest breaks, this is an additional $247.50.

The Labor Code and your Wage Order (5?) calculate whether you had exempt status on a weekly basis, not an annual basis, so actions your employer takes can affect your status on a weekly basis.

There is an other issue, usually wrongfully called "misclassification." This occurs when an employer classifies an employee as Exempt, but does not assign exempt tasks to them for more than 50% of their work day. I think that this is a "misassignment" of duties to an exempt employee. This would also lose Exempt status. How much time do you spend ringing a register, doing stock work, selling to customers? More than 50% of your day? You may not be exempt. How much of the day are you the only one in your department? You need to be managing at least one other employee.

You should consult with a good employment attorney on these issues, and you should keep complete records of hours worked, meal periods missed, rest periods not taken and the types of duties that you perform.