Q: My wife works as an hourly employee for a California school district. She is allowed to attend the staff meetings.
When she voluntarily attends these meetings is the district required to pay her?
A:
More would need to be known. For instance, is she a member of a union? When you say voluntary attendance, are you saying she is not being asked to be there, but goes anyway because she is interested?
An employer is required to pay for all time that it "suffers or permits" an employee to work for it. However, if your wife is simply attending things to learn more or meet others, as opposed to attending meetings that she is being explicitly or implicitly encouraged to attend, the issue is far more murky. It would be wise for your wife to locate and consult with an employment law attorney who can learn more about the specifics and give her some confidential advice.
Good luck to you and to her.
A: Volunteer time is not usually considered working time to entitle an employee to additional pay. As a Certificated employee she still has a contract. If she volunteers to go to the meetings, think of it as volunteering to go to the PTA meeting. No one gets paid for that unless they are salaried.
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