Davis Signs Law Restoring Overtime Pay

SAN FRANCISCO — California will restore a daily overtime pay requirement for 8 million workers under a law the governor signed Tuesday, fulfilling a campaign pledge.

The measure backed by Gov. Gray Davis requires employers to pay workers 1 1/2 times the normal rate for working more than eight hours a day and double pay for working more than 12 hours a day.

The Democratic governor said he insisted as the bill was being crafted that it “reflect the flexibility required in the modern workplace.”

“For the first time in the state’s history, this measure recognizes the realities of the modern economy,” Davis said at a news conference. “It will allow employees to work out any arrangement they want with an employer to allow them to be a good parent and a good employee.”

The law lets workers agree, by a two-thirds vote, to flexible schedules under which they would work up to 10 hours a day in a 40-hour week without getting daily overtime.

If their employer agrees, workers also can take personal time off and make it up later in the week without overtime, as long as they worked no more than 11 hours a day.

Hours worked on a seventh day in a single work week would be overtime hours when the worker has logged more than 40 hours.

The law takes effect Jan. 1. Most salaried workers will be exempt from it, as will unionized employees already protected by labor contracts.

California had an overtime pay requirement until 1997, when a commission appointed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson, a Republican, scrapped it. That decision required overtime in five broad job classifications only after 40 hours of work a week.