California
California alternative workweek (4/10) rules for field crews
The hardest state in the country to get right, and the one where getting it wrong is most expensive. California layers daily overtime, double time, a seventh-day premium, meal and rest periods and a split-shift premium on top of the federal weekly rule, and it lets employees enforce most of it themselves.
What the law requires
A 4/10 or similar schedule is only lawful if the affected work unit adopted it by a two-thirds secret-ballot election, in writing, reported to the state. On a day worked beyond the schedule's regular number of workdays, hours past 8 are double time.
What it means on a crew
If the election is invalid the schedule is void and standard daily overtime applies retroactively to every hour worked under it. That is the largest single exposure we found when auditing our own engine - roughly $6,240 per technician per year.
What Punchless does
Selecting a 4/10 requires recording the election date, who is attesting to it, and the schedule that was adopted. Without all of those we fall back to standard California rules rather than honouring a schedule nobody can describe.
Every rule we enforce is published with the statute behind it and the test that checks it, so this is a claim you can verify rather than take on faith.
Other California rules
Verified against primary sources on August 3, 2026. Statutes and wage orders change, and some of this is genuinely unsettled - re-check the source before relying on it. Punchless is not a law firm and this is not legal advice.