Seyfarth Shaw LLP | www.seyfarth.com Litigating CA Wage & Hour Class and PAGA Actions (23rd Edition) 73 Inc.”353 Mays noted that "California Labor Code § 226 was established to protect the concrete interests of California’s workers, not merely to confer pure procedural rights."354 Mays noted the plaintiff’s failure to “allege any real-world consequences flowing, or even potentially flowing, from the violation. Nor does the relatively trivial nature of the violation—swapping “Wal-Mart Associates, Inc.” for “WalMart Stores, Inc.”—pose a clear threat of harm. ... [The employee’s] bare confusion, without more, lacks a meaningful nexus to the concrete interests safeguarded by § 226.”355 C. The Supreme Court Approves Of Derivative Wage Statement Claims Based On Unpaid Meal And Rest Premiums In Naranjo v. Spectrum Security Services, Inc., the California Supreme Court held that “an employer’s obligation under Labor Code section 226 to report wages earned includes an obligation to report premium pay for missed breaks.”356 Therefore, “provided the conditions specified in the statute are otherwise met, failure to report premium pay for missed breaks can support monetary liability under section 226 for failure to supply an accurate itemized statement reflecting an employee’s gross wages earned, net wages earned, and credited hours worked.”357 As a result of the Naranjo decision and its retroactive application, plaintiffs can now seek wage statement penalties that are purely derivative of meal and rest break claims. This overruled, at least in part, a prior Court of Appeal decision that had, quite sensibly, held that the Legislature wanted wage statements to accurately report the amounts of hours worked and wages actually paid—not what the employee would have been paid in the absence of an employer error.358 D. Paid Sick Leave Must Be Recorded On Wage Statements California’s paid sick leave statute added another notice requirement for employers.359 On each designated pay date, the statute requires employers to provide employees notice of their available paid sick time either (1) on the employee’s wage statement; or (2) in a separate “writing” outlining the available sick time.360 For employers who provide unlimited sick time or PTO, the notice can simply state “unlimited.”361 353 Mays v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 804 Fed. App’x 641, 642 (2020), 354 Id. at 643. 355 Id. at 643-44. Note that the Mays decision rested on its finding that the plaintiff failed to satisfy Article III’s injury-in-fact requirement. Id. at 644. Mays noted that the plaintiff might have been able to maintain her claim in the friendlier confines of the state courts. Id. 356 13 Cal. 5th 93, 121 (2022). 357 Id. 358 Maldonado v. Epsilon Plastics, Inc., 22 Cal. App. 5th 1308 (2018). 359 Lab. Code § 246(i). 360 Id. 361 Id.
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