Seyfarth Shaw LLP | www.seyfarth.com Litigating CA Wage & Hour Class and PAGA Actions (23rd Edition) 71 X. Itemized Wage Statement Claims A. Labor Code Section 226 Labor Code section 226 requires that employers issue itemized wage statements with every paycheck, to show (for non-exempt employees) (1) gross wages earned, (2) total hours worked by the employee, (3) the number of piece-rate units earned (for piece-rate workers), (4) all deductions taken, (5) net wages earned, (6) the inclusive dates of the period for which the employee is paid, (7) the name of the employee and either an employee ID number or the last four digits of the employee’s social security number,341 (8) the name and address of the employer, and (9) all applicable hourly rates in effect during the pay period and the corresponding number of hours worked at each hourly rate.342 Failure to record any of these items could violate Section 226(a).343 Although courts have typically construed the other eight categories of information specified in Section 226(a) very strictly and narrowly, they have been more lenient where it comes to the name and address of the employer.344 Before 2003, the statute required only that employers furnish a wage statement. There was no requirement that the information in the wage statement be accurate. Under the 2003 amendments, however, the information reported on required items must be accurate. As a result of this change, plaintiffs’ lawyers began including wage statement claims in class actions, such as those alleging exempt misclassification or failure to properly pay wages or calculate overtime. One variant of their theory was that wage statements, to be “accurate,” must state the proper amount of pay owed, as opposed to what the employer had actually paid. The Court of Appeal rejected this approach in Maldonado v. Epsilon Plastics, Inc.345 In Maldonado, the employer, having improperly adopted an alternative 341 Until January 2008, the wage statement was allowed to contain the employee’s entire social security number. Now, wage statements must use either an employee ID or the last four digits of the employee’s social security number. 342 Lab. Code § 226(a). 343 See, e.g., Zavala v. Scott Bros. Dairy, Inc., 143 Cal. App. 4th 585 (2006) (“The failure to list the precise number of hours worked during the pay period conflicts with the express language of the statute and stands in the way of the statutory purpose.”); Cicairos v. Summit Logistics, Inc., 133 Cal. App. 4th 949, 954, 961 (2005) (“[T]he wage statements and driver trip summaries do not list the defendant employer’s name and address and thus are not adequate itemized wage statements.”). 344 Savea v. YRC Inc., 34 Cal. App. 5th 173, 178-180 (2019). See also Noori v. Countrywide Payroll & HR Solutions, Inc., 43 Cal. App. 5th 957, 963 (2019) (“Section 226 does not expressly require that the name registered with the California Secretary of State be included on the wage statement . . .. Nor must the company’s complete name be included.”). Noori collected and analyzed all of the state and federal decisions that had previously addressed whether the use of a truncated employer name violated the statute. Id.at 964-66. The court cited with approval Elliot v. Spherion Pac. Work, LLC, 572 F. Supp. 2d 1169 (C.D. Cal. 2008) (truncation of “Spherion Pacific Workforce, LLC” as “Spherion Pacific Work, LLC” was not a violation) and Mejia v. Farmland Mutual Insurance Company, 2018 WL 3198006, at *6 (E.D. Cal. June 26, 2018) (no violation where employer listed its name as “Farmland Mutual Insurance Co.,” thereby abbreviating the word “Company”). 345 Maldonado v. Epsilon Plastics, Inc., 22 Cal. App. 5th 1308 (2018).
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