Wage & Hour Lawyer Serving Los Angeles

What Is Wage Theft in Los Angeles

Wage theft is any pay you earned and never received - and Los Angeles's economy produces it at industrial scale: unpaid daily overtime in warehouses and kitchens, "off the clock" prep and closing work in retail, missed meal and rest breaks in hospitals and salons, tip skimming in restaurants, flat-rate schemes in garment work and delivery that fall below minimum wage, and misclassification everywhere from trucking to tech. California law - the strongest wage law in the country - turns each violation into a specific dollar claim, and Los Angeles adds its own higher minimum wage on top of the state floor.

The Rules Employers Break Most in LA

• Daily overtime - over 8 hours in a day is time-and-a-half, over 12 is double time, regardless of the weekly total; the "flexible schedule" that ignores daily triggers shorts you every week.
• Meal and rest breaks - a duty-free 30-minute meal before the fifth hour and paid 10-minute rests every 4 hours; each miss owes you an extra hour of pay (Labor Code 226.7).
• Final-paycheck timing - fired means paid immediately; quitting means within 72 hours; each late day adds a full day of wages, up to 30 (section 203).
• Misclassification - "independent contractor" is lawful only under the ABC test; a 1099 and a title decide nothing.
• Off-the-clock work - security lines, donning gear, closing duties, answering messages after shift: compensable.
• Expense reimbursement - personal phone and mileage used for work must be reimbursed (section 2802).

How to File a Wage Claim in Los Angeles

Two doors. The Labor Commissioner (DLSE) takes individual wage claims administratively. Court - where systemic violations become class and PAGA actions - is where the same broken policy applied to a whole workforce gets valued properly; since the 2024 reform, workers keep 35% of PAGA penalties. Civil employment suits are heard downtown at the Stanley Mosk Courthouse, 111 North Hill Street. Wage claims generally reach back three years (four under the Unfair Competition Law), and retaliation for claiming wages is separately unlawful (Labor Code 98.6) - presumed retaliatory within 90 days. We handle the filing and the math; call 1-800-371-3088 before any deadline. For the full statewide rules, see our California wage and hour page.

What You Can Recover

The unpaid wages themselves, overtime differentials, one-hour premiums for every missed break, waiting-time penalties up to 30 days of pay, interest, paystub penalties (section 226), and attorney's fees on wage claims. A worker shorted "only" a few hours a week is routinely owed five figures across the claim period - which is exactly why employers count on nobody doing the math. We do the math free: 1-800-371-3088.

Public records for Los Angeles employers

Before you file, look up the employer. The U.S. Department of Labor has closed 5,161 wage and hour investigations of Los Angeles employers since 2004; 4,287 found violations, and employers agreed to pay $51,112,998 in back wages to 39,160 workers, the latest case closing April 2026. The largest back-wage record in Los Angeles belongs to Ocha Classic ($825,775). Across Los Angeles County the record runs to 10,609 cases and $153,040,852. Every case in the California wage theft tracker is a federal file; it does not include Labor Commissioner claims, so a clean record there is not a clean record. Federal back wages are computed at $7.25 an hour and weekly overtime; the California numbers for the same hours are usually several times higher.

More Los Angeles pages: Hostile Work Environment, Pregnancy Discrimination, Sexual Harassment, Workplace Discrimination, Workplace Harassment, Workplace Retaliation, Wrongful Termination, and the Los Angeles employment lawyer hub.