California overtime is daily — and that’s the trap.

When does overtime start in California?

Under Labor Code §510, independent triggers each fire overtime for nonexempt workers, and any one of them is enough. Wage Order 16 (on-site construction) repeats the same tiers in its Section 3(A)(1).

The practical consequence: a crew that works four 10-hour days totals 40 hours and owes zero federal overtime, but 8 hours of California overtime, two per day. Any payroll process that only watches the weekly total underpays, and the unpaid wages also feed waiting-time and wage-statement exposure. See the gap for your own schedule

What does a 13-hour day pay?

Rules stated as thresholds are easy to nod along to and hard to price. Here is a single storm-response day, one worker, 5:00 AM to 6:00 PM, at a $32 regular rate, with every hour placed in its tier.

When is double time owed?

Two situations: hours beyond 12 in a single workday, and hours beyond 8 on the seventh consecutive workday of a workweek. A 14-hour emergency dry-in after a storm pays 8 regular hours + 4 at 1.5× + 2 at 2×. There is no “we agreed to straight time” exception; overtime rights can't be waived by agreement.

What is the regular rate of pay, and why isn't it the hourly wage?

Every overtime hour is paid on the regular rate of pay, which folds in nondiscretionary bonuses, production and piece-rate earnings, and commissions. The California Supreme Court held in Ferra v. Loews Hollywood Hotel (2021) that meal and rest premiums are paid on the same regular rate of compensation. Two field-crew specifics:

• Flat-sum bonuses are worse than they look. Under Alvarado v. Dart Container (2018), a flat bonus (a $100 attendance bonus, a per-job completion bonus) is divided by only the non-overtime hours worked. That smaller divisor gives a higher regular rate than the federal method, on purpose: $100 over 40 non-overtime hours adds $2.50 an hour, where dividing by 45 total hours adds $2.22.
• Production bonuses ride every overtime hour. A crew bonus program that ignores its own effect on overtime rates recreates the violation it was meant to reward around. The overtime calculator leaves bonuses out, so real figures run higher.

Can the same hour be counted twice?

No. Hours already paid as daily overtime don't count again toward the 40-hour weekly trigger, and Wage Order 16 §3(D) says nothing requires combining more than one overtime rate for a single hour. The discipline that matters more is the inverse: each hour must be paid at the highest single rate it qualifies for. Getting this right means computing the day-by-day and week-level math together, per worker, per workweek — exactly the arithmetic that breaks spreadsheets at crew scale.

Is unauthorized overtime still owed?

Yes. If the employer knew or should have known the work happened, the overtime is payable, even when it violated a written policy. You may discipline for unauthorized overtime; you may never dock it. The load-bearing phrase is “should have known”: timestamped clock data showing when work actually started and ended turns that from a jury question into a record.

Can a crew work four 10-hour days without overtime?

Crews love four 10-hour days. In construction, Wage Order 16 §3(B) allows up to 10 hours a day within a 40-hour week without daily overtime only under an Alternative Workweek Schedule (AWS) adopted by the book:

• a written proposal from the employer, voted on in a secret ballot held before the work is performed, passing by two-thirds of the affected employees in the work unit;
• a written disclosure and a noticed meeting at least 14 days before the vote (in a second language, too, if 5 percent or more of the unit primarily speak it);
• the results reported to the DIR Office of the Director–Research within 30 days after they are final, and posted at the job site.

Even with a valid AWS, hours past the scheduled day and past 40 in the week pay 1.5×, and hours past 12 in a day, or past 8 on a day outside the schedule, pay 2×. An AWS of more than 8 hours a day can't be used on a public-works contract in violation of Labor Code §§1810–1815. An informal handshake 4×10 owes two hours of overtime every day it runs, one of the most common self-inflicted wounds in construction, because everyone involved thinks they agreed to it.

Do construction crews follow different overtime rules?

Mostly the same ones, with two details worth knowing. Wage Order 16 defines a workday as any consecutive 24-hour period beginning at the same time each calendar day and a workweek as a fixed, regularly recurring 168 hours, so the week your payroll uses has to be one fixed week. And Labor Code §514 sets aside the daily-overtime rules of §§510–511 for employees covered by a valid collective bargaining agreement that expressly covers wages, hours and working conditions, pays premium rates for all overtime hours, and sets a regular hourly rate of at least 30 percent above the state minimum wage (about $21.97 an hour at the 2026 minimum of $16.90). Union-covered crews should read the agreement, not just this guide.

Who is exempt from California overtime in 2026?

What does compliant overtime look like at crew scale?

• Minute-level records with device timestamps — daily overtime math is only as good as the punches under it, and rounding is indefensible near meals (Donohue).
• Daily + weekly + 7th-day math computed together, per worker, per workweek, with bonuses folded into the rate.
• Long days flagged while they're happening — the cheapest 12-hour day is the one the office saw at hour 10.
• Drive time counted where Morillion requires it — a yard-to-site hour can be the hour that crosses 8.

CDO computes the daily, weekly and seventh-day tiers on every punch as it lands and pre-fills payroll for a person to approve. Meal-break rules are the other half — read that guide