Workers Rights
Know your basic rights on minimum wage, overtime, breaks, paid leave, and insurances!
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Basic Rights
Current Minimum Wage
Meals and Breaks
Overtime
Paid Sick Leave
Types of Leave
Paid Family Leave
Bereavement Leave
Reproductive Loss Leave
Insurance
Unemployment Insurance
State Disability Insurance
Defend Your Rights
Retaliation
CPA Consultations
Basic Rights
You have rights regardless of your immigration status, language, the size of your company, or whether you work part-time or are paid in cash.
Current Minimum Wage
Effective July 1st, 2025:
San Francisco: $19.18 / hour
Daly City: $17.07 / hour
Oakland: $16.89 / hour
California: $16.50 / hour
Effective June 1, 2024:
California health care workers will earn a minimum of $18, $21 or $23 / hour, depending on what type of facility employs them and where they work.
Effective April 1, 2024:
California-based fast-food workers for chains with 60 or more locations around the nation will earn at least $20 / hour.
Overtime
1.5x your regular hourly rate — After 8 hours of work, 40 hours in one week, or the first 8 hours on the 7th consecutive day.
2x your regular hourly rate — After 12 hours of consecutive work, and after 8 hours on your 7th consecutive day.
Meals and Breaks
You are mandated to receive:
10-minute paid rest break every 4 hours.
30-minute uninterrupted unpaid meal break every 5 hours.
Workers don’t need to work during the meal break.
Workers can choose to waive the meal break if they don’t work over 6 hours per day.
For every day you don’t receive a meal or rest break, your boss must pay you an extra hour of wages for each type of break missed.
Paid Sick Leave
All California workers earn 1 hour of paid sick leave for every 30 hours worked.
Paid sick leave can be used your health needs or a family member’s health needs.
Health needs include preventative care and annual check-ups.
For specific purposes, paid sick leave can also be used if you are a victim of domestic violence, sexual assault, or stalking.
Starting on Jan 1, 2024, an employer must allow an employee to use at least 40 hours or 5 days of paid sick leave a year (whichever is more).
For example, if your normal work day is 10 hours, you could use up to 50 hours of paid sick leave.
Accrual: Workers can carry over unused sick leave from one year to the next year.
The law allows an employer to limit an employee’s total accrued paid sick leave to no more than 80 hours or 10 days. Under the accrual method, workers can carry over unused sick leave from one year to the next year.
Types of Leave
Are you recovering or doing care work for a family member?
Paid Family Leave
Paid family leave provides up to 8 weeks within a 12 month period of paid benefits when you have wage loss from taking time off to:
Care for a seriously ill family member (parent, spouse, children or ‘designated person’).
Bond with a new child.
Participate in a qualifying event because of a family member’s military deployment to a foreign country.
Paid family leave does NOT provide job protection, only monetary benefits.
Bereavement Leave
California employers with 5 or more employees must allow up to 5 days of unpaid, job-protected leave upon the death of a close family member, including a spouse, child, parent, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, domestic partner or parent-in-law.
Reproductive Loss Leave
California employers must allow employees who suffered reproductive loss to take 5 days off within 3 months of the event.
If no applicable leave policy is in place (or no paid sick leave or vacation leave), the reproductive loss leave will be unpaid.
Insurance
The California Employment Development Department (EDD) administers unemployment and disability insurance to those that qualify.
Unemployment Insurance
1. How to Qualify:
You must have permission to work legally (e.g. citizenship, green card, work permit) in the United States.
You lost your job through no fault of your own.
You earned enough money during the base period (a 4-quarter period in the past 18 months).
You must be ready, willing, and able to work and are actively seeking work.
2. How to Apply:
Method 1 — Apply through EDD’s Benefit Programs Online website: https://portal.edd.ca.gov/WebApp
EDD’s Benefit Programs Online is available in English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Spanish, Vietnamese, Korean, Tagalog, and Armenian.
Method 2 — Apply by phone: (800) 300-5616
State Disability Insurance
The State Disability Insurance (SDI) program is a deduction from employees’ wages. This is usually shown as “CASDI” on your paystub. SDI includes Disability Insurance and Paid Family Leave.
Disability Insurance (DI):
DI provides short-term wage replacement benefits.
To be eligible, you must be a California worker who has suffered a loss of wages from being unable to work due to a non work-related illness, injury, or pregnancy.
DI does NOT provide job protection, only monetary benefits.
Paid Family Leave:
Please refer back to the section Types of Leave.
Defend Your Rights
Keep a calendar of your work hours, including rest and meal breaks.
Keep your paystubs and other work records.
Identify coworkers who may have the same problems as you. There is strength in numbers!
Write down your employer and business information, such as their name, the bank they use, other businesses they own, etc.
Retaliation
Did you recently raise concerns about your work? Did you get fired or get your hours cut as a result?
Effective Jan 1, 2024, an employer will be assumed to retaliate against the employee if the employer disciplined the employee within 90 days of exercising his or her rights protected by the California Labor Code and the California Equal Pay Act.
If you engaged in protected activity by exercising your workplace rights provided by the Labor Code AND then were retaliated against, please reach out to CPA to learn more about retaliation and what you can do.
CPA Consultations
If you or anyone you know has questions about your rights, please call our phone number at (415) 391-6986 and leave a voicemail. Our team will get back to you within 1-2 business days.
Please note that all appointments must be scheduled beforehand. Please call and leave a voicemail, or come to our office Tuesdays or Thursdays from 10am - 12pm, or 2pm - 5pm to schedule an appointment for another day.
Disclaimer — The information provided on this website does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice; instead, all information, content, and materials available on this site are for general informational purposes only. Information on this website may not constitute the most up-to-date legal or other information. This website contains links to other third-party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser; Chinese Progressive Association does not recommend or endorse the contents of the third-party sites.