San Fernando

It’s emotionally challenging to face a conflict with your employer that seems to threaten your livelihood. Wage and hour, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, and whistleblowing are difficult issues that are best handled with representation from a seasoned San Fernando employment law attorney. Whether you have a wage and hour, discrimination, or whistleblowing claim, give the Calderone Law Firm a call. Our principal Vincent Calderone has more than 20 years of experience representing workers in securing justice against their employers.

Sometimes it’s hard for employees to know whether they have been subject to discrimination on the job. Discrimination can take many forms including failure to hire, failure to promote, demotion, termination, layoffs, unfair write-ups, and harassment. Critical to whether you’ve been discriminated against is the reason any of these adverse employment actions has been taken; discrimination occurs when the reason for an adverse employment action is a trait that is protected under an antidiscrimination law, whether a federal law such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or a state law like the California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA).

In most cases, FEHA provides greater protection to a wider range of employees than does federal law. FEHA applies when a San Fernando employer has at least 5 employees. However, it’s important to be aware that sexual harassment is illegal regardless of the size of your employer. Sexual harassment may involve unwelcome sexual advances, offering employment benefits in exchange for sexual favors, gestures, displaying sexually suggestive objects or pictures, leering, derogatory comments, graphic comments, physical touching, assault, or threatening retaliation for rejecting advances.

If you are a nonexempt employee in California, you should be paid minimum wage and overtime and given certain meal and rest breaks that accrue to nonexempt employees under the state’s wage and hour laws. Often, the damages in wage and hour lawsuits are small, but it may be appropriate to file a class action lawsuit alongside your coworkers with similar wage and hour claims against your employer. For example, if your employer fails to give you a rest break for every four hours you work in a workday for a few weeks, the amount of wage theft may seem minimal; but if there are one hundred employees asked to give up their rest breaks, the wage theft may be more sizeable. It is crucial to give the seasoned lawyers of Calderone Law Firm a call, if you think you may have grounds to bring a class action lawsuit against your employer. The first step we’ll need to take in a class action suit is to ask the court for class certification, which requires us to establish numerosity, commonality, typicality and adequacy. The class should be large enough that an individual lawsuit against your employer would be impracticable. The class members must share common questions of fact and law in connection with wage and hour issues such as rest breaks. And the representatives of the class will need to have typical claims such that they can adequately protect class interests.

Federal and California law prohibit whistleblower retaliation. This means you shouldn’t be penalized by your employer because you reported its legal violations, regulatory violations, or acts that are against public policy. For example, under California law, you should not be retaliated against if your report your employer to the SEC for suspected violations of securities regulations. Likewise, you should not be punished by your employer for reporting the employer to the police for a crime it committed.

Our firm’s principal Vincent Calderone and our trustworthy San Fernando employment lawyers represent clients in employment lawsuits involving discrimination, harassment, retaliation, wage and hour law violations, and whistleblowing. We are firmly committed to serving our clients’ interests. Call us at (424) 348-8290 or complete our online form.