California Rest Break Pay: How to Stay Compliant
26 June 2025
To stay compliant in California, you must pay rest breaks for non-exempt workers at their average earnings rate - not just their base rate. Here's how.
While it took them two months to respond to two emails on this topic, I have finally gotten a pretty definitive answer from CA DIR on the topic of paying rest breaks correctly when compensating employees anything other than pure hourly rates.
In a nutshell, in California if you are paying NON-EXEMPT technicians, installers, and/or even CSRs Spiffs, Commissions, Task/Piece Pay, or individual KPI bonuses, you MUST PAY A PREMIUM FOR REQUIRED REST BREAKS BASED ON THE AVERAGE RATE OF PAY EARNED, NOT JUST A BASE RATE OF PAY.
While the formula is different, it is exactly the same concept as required for Overtime and Double-time premium payments. Required rest breaks account for at least 100 minutes per week for a standard 40 hour week (two paid 10-min breaks per eight hour shift). Example: $1,000 in commission over 40 hours results in an extra payment owed of $41.75 for compliant rest break adjusted pay.
Note: Our proprietary Compensation Plan Management plans ARE compliant on this and have been for years.
If you have not had us review your compensation plan for compliance recently, please contact us so we can review and explore what changes need to be made to protect you from a PAGA lawsuit! Five minutes with a paystub is all we need to lay out any vulnerability to your Brand.
The only time it is too late to take action is AFTER a lawsuit hits your desk.
If you're not doing business in California but are curious about the nuances of your state's regulations, reach out to us and we can advise. There are a couple other states with unusual requirements you'll want to be aware of, plus federal Overtime laws can also get complex with Spiffs/Commissions/etc., regardless of where in the US you do business.
As always, I hope this helps.
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