(upbeat music) - Your team requested a ride, but this time not from you. It's through their Uber team account. It's an Uber account that allows your team to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your team to your Uber account today. - I'm glad you said that because that is really my point. If you're in California, you need to look up your city, your county's minimum wage to make sure you're good. Welcome back, folks. It's another episode of It's About Payroll. It's about your paycheck. Shoot, we're up to 129 on It's About Payroll and episode 40 on It's About Your Paycheck. And if you're wondering, yes, at some point we will split this off and there will be separate episodes. But sometimes it just makes sense to do one and this is one of those things we think. You tell us. But before we get into all that, what's up, Walt? - What's up, what's up with you, man? I'm good. - It's a William. Wait, it's Walter William. - Yes, I never get it, right? - No, Walter William, let that hurt. - William, you let it hurt. - William, you let it hurt. - William, you let it hurt. 'Cause I always get confused. 'Cause like, your name is Walter William, but then one point you was like, now I don't go about William and I'm like, all right. So I'm like, okay, that must be his first name. So William, Walter William, the third, the dunk in the third, WB3, you know what I mean? - Yep, that'll be it. - What's good, man? - Nothing much, no, I'm good, bro. - Just grateful, send them that gratitude again. - Good, man, that's a great thing. - Okay, it's ready to go. I bet you're not. - Oh, doing the same. - Doing the same, man, it's just, it's definitely a season of change. - It's transition. - Yeah, it's definitely a season of transition. Who knows? - Who knows? Who knows, guys. - Okay. - Sometimes life in general will have you speeches and just like, hey, it is what it is. - Yeah, so many just the way I go. My life for the last almost a year now has been like, I think of Oprah saying, you can have it all, but not all at once. So it's okay, it's things like folks, we, when we like share stuff, it's because we're going through it, right? We are not at a point where we can look. We could give some people some advice 'cause we are successful in our own, right? But yeah, like we, I don't think we say it enough. We're not talking at folks. We're talking with y'all, right? - We're relating, we're sharing our experiences and sharing our struggles. - Curried and passed. - Through payroll, through your paycheck, through these conversations. We just say, yep, present, future pass. Who knows? Yes, I don't want, I like out of, 'cause I don't want to have a folks like, who do they think they are? - Nobody really, we don't think we're in, but we, Brian and Walt, that's what we think we are. - And then with, hopefully with AI, we can be like minority report and predict your real problems of the editorial. - My son just, my son was just brought up something about, say something going at some rap artist because they accused them of using AI, but I was like, wait, did he use AI for his own voice? And apparently, he may not have the facts, right? But I was like, I don't think there's a problem with death. I was like, the problem is somebody taking our voices and trying to use it in their game. That's the problem, taking other art, like how that Drake, what was it, Drake and somebody. Kendrick, they write that, I wonder if that's part of the beef. That's part of the beef. I don't even know what's part of the beef, right? Who cares, they just got record sales and record streams and all that. As long as they don't take it to real life, rap beef is cool, rap battling is part of the culture. Just don't make it biggie two-pot thing where it got real and we lost two of the greatest MCs, two of the greatest hip-hop artists that will ever be. That was senseless, that was unnecessary. You know what I mean? - The world. - Speaking of hip-hop, by the way, if we're talking real quick, I just saw a piece by piece. It's a Lego movie, but it's for Ralph Williams' documentary. - Oh, wow. - Yup. - He-- - That's cool. - It's, go see it with wifey, you will love it. I think you will love it, I think you will absolutely enjoy it. I saw it took the kid, I was the one that prompted it 'cause I saw the preview for it and I was like, oh, I wanna see this. I'm the one-- - I think we're seeing a trailer right now. - 'Cause you know what it is, I'm being kids movies. So I saw the trailer at one of the other kids movies that we went to see and I was like, oh, mark that on the calendar, we're gonna see that. Sure enough. - Oh, yes. - Okay, I'm gonna check that out. - Mad underrated, it's definitely not getting the love that it should be getting as a Lego movie, as a hip-hop movie 'cause it's everything's about-- - Diddy. - Oh my, you see-- - There's some distractions of things. Yeah, man, forget him, bro, like-- - Okay. - Who can-- - Really, who and that's what my wife was saying, she's distractions, babe, distractions. I was like, 'cause everything is diddy, like all the, everything on the feed is, come on. You know what I mean? - Oh. - 'Cause the part that is just, 'cause we brought it up, we haven't talked about it on the show yet, the part that I would definitely not condone, support in any way is any underage type of things, right? - Yeah. - I'm a father of daughters, like you were doing that as you deplorable, like you're horrible, you deserve every minute in jail that, you know, even with males, but it's not a rule. - No matter who, yeah, oh God, no, it matters. Like that age thing is horrible, you know what I mean? - Yeah. - But his sexuality, if it's just a matter of his sexuality, then, yeah, hey, clearly he was in the closet, I think, is what they're saying, I haven't gotten dug into any of it, I'm just, it's nonsense to me, other than the illegal, illegal activity, he needs to cope, and if he's in jail, clearly they had enough to put him away, you know what I mean? - Yeah. - Yeah. - You gotta pay your time, kid, sorry, you were a predator just like Hollywood and how they talk about the casting couch and all the horrible things that people in power do, you know what I mean? I think it's karma, I think, hey, you do the crime, you gotta do the time, if karma comes back to you, one way or another, and that's what it is. - I agree, man. - Hey man, look, we're with that. We're gonna segue-- - Yes. - We're talking about, you mentioned two parks, so today's topic is gonna be about-- ♪ How old are you low? ♪ - F*ck. - I'm gonna throw a ball. - How old are you? - We don't have a producer, folks, so we're all like, we're gonna have to start throwing the old sound bites. And exactly. Bandart there. And you know, I mean, going back to Cali. Who will love that? Oh gosh, there's so many. Anywho, yes, we are talking about California minimum wage today. We're getting in and just give you give employees enough to be armed in dangerous is savvy with information. We want to empower you always. Information and resources and the tools and the savviness to go out there, find more information, do the research in the right spots. Go look at the right things. Right? Look, this, the topics that we talk about are so how can I say so big? There's so much information and everything that we only hope to give you enough to go get you fired up and research in the right places and learn the right things. We want to spark. We want to spark that interest to be like, Oh, what they say? Hold on. Let me go. You might go on the phone every anyway, right? We have the most powerful tool in the world. In our hands. I guess so frustrated in my kids when they ask me questions because I'm like, you literally have a computer in your hand. You ain't even got a type. You could just ask Siri. Come on, you have magic in your hands. Come on. What are you asking me for? Go Google it. Siri it. So anyway, we're going to get into Cali minimum wage. But before that, we have some pay news to help and to drop the little nuggets here and there because we like current events. We like news. Stay informed. And of course, I don't know. I don't know what the word is. But as always, we find the this common in sync, even when we're not in sync because what we prep, but we don't talk about every moment in every article that we're going to go pull. So we both hold fast food articles that have to do with California. Mine is the about the fast food minimum wage that happened in California in the last year. Employers were like up in arms because of this new minimum wage. How could this be? We're going to lose our business. It's going to kill the industry. Because they don't they balked at having to pay their workers more money heaven forbid you have to pay them a fair wage. You know what I mean? But survey says that none of those things happen. So all these business owners said, Oh, because the minimum wage is going to go up for fast food workers. I'm actually good. We're going to lose workers. We're going to lose business. Our business is going to die. Right now that may have happened for some business. It definitely did. It definitely did. It happened for some. But those are going to be businesses that are on the fringe of collapse anyway. You know what I mean? The pandemic got rid of those businesses that were just like on the fringe right on the cusp of staying in business or going out of business. So that means you were about to you were one thing away from going out of business anyway. And this just happened to be that thing, right? Look, I'm a student of business and I get seemingly cold about how it plays out because I just understand the business of it all. And I get there are people on the other side of I get it, but it businesses business. It's one of the first things we learned that business school was business ethics is an oxymoron. So it doesn't always click like morality in the thing. It should. But when you go buy business, it's not always going to take care of the people. So any who there are some companies that had did go out of business because they couldn't afford to pay their people the $20. I think it was $20 an hour or something that I went up to in California just for fast food workers. Okay. But the opposite happened. They just added more jobs in the most recent survey. Like they're up. So go fake. There you go. What's yours about, man? When you need meal time inspiration, it's worth shopping king supers for thousands of appetizing ingredients that inspire countless mouthwatering meals. And no matter what tasty choice you make, you'll enjoy our everyday low prices plus extra ways to save like digital coupons worth over $600 each week and up to $1 off per gallon at the pump with points. So you can get big flavors and big savings king supers fresh for everyone. Fuel restrictions apply. Mine's about something that happened at Taco Bell, my favorite. So there was a franchisee who owned a couple of Taco Bells and subways in Northern California. Okay. What happened is that they cheated over 230 workers out of $4 million in the way. What? How? Did they say how? Yeah. So this game evolved them paying their employees below the minimum wage, the nine over time and making illegal deductions for meal breaks and cash shortages. Many of them didn't speak English. Is it were immigrants and they were threatened with the deportation or getting fired that they had illegal people working there too. Maybe also visas worth visas. I don't know. I don't know what you're saying, but look, they tried to multiple innovations here. Yeah, the first they also falsified payroll records. Oh my God, but it was one worker. It was that one worker. What do we always say? You speaking up. Right. You made me that one domino. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That won't work or stood up and reported it to their local workers. Right since her ninth and it's working on investigation. And they found out that employees had been were earning less than five dollars an hour after reductions in California. Oh, that's. Wait, wait, there's one more thing that I really think is the shocker is the big twist here. So after their investigation, they found out that this person was tied to organized crime. Oh, and he and human trafficking. Oh, and so that's some of the workers because some of the workers have been trafficked to the US and forced to work under the threat of violence. So by the end of 2020, the operators face criminal charges and were ordered to pay millions and back wages for the archives are going to be in the show notes and stuff. I found that fascinating. Yeah. Yeah. It's so on point on point with what we're talking about. Yeah, that's crazy, man. We keep finding this stuff. I swear to God, folks, we thought one day we were like, we're not going to find enough content in this arena. There's no way people are just going to continue to make commit crimes and make the wrong crimes. No, no, no, no, no, ghosty boys cow. That temptation. It's that temptation. It comes back to that temptation to kill you every dime. Oh, man. Whoo, before we get into it, let's pay some bills here. Shout out to time track. All right. Time track goal. Let's get it. All right. Are you tired of the manual employee time tracking and error prone payroll processes? Discover how time track goal can revolutionize your payroll and HR departments. That should be a word the error prone payroll passes to say five times fast. No, no, no, this is fine. What I thought about when I read it the first time, I was like, Oh, man, we could loosen it up a little bit. So we just did. And time track goal is having an upcoming webinar next Tuesday, October 29 at 2 p.m. Eastern to learn more about the fight. What's up? Yeah. By the time you hear this, it's going to be Tuesday. Oh, actually. Yes. When you hear this, it'll be like Tuesday, that Tuesday. Yes. So get on it. They have no webinar. Time track goal. The link to register will be in the show notes and it's also in the post when we post it wherever, but it's also in the show notes. And so any who the webinar is going to cover a few different things. They're going to cover employee tracking for hourly and salary employees. They're going to cover streamline payroll integration because it integrates with mostly, I think, every system. They're going to talk about the powerful mobile app that they have also with the geofencing capabilities. They're going to talk about accurate PTO tracking and time off requests, all which you can do in the time track goal system. They're going to talk about how you can use an ordinary tablet to do modern payroll employee time tracking. And last but not least, automatic holiday pay calculations, which we all know we need help with because sometimes it's manual and you don't want to have to do manual. You want to automate this stuff. You want to automate. You want to automate as much as you can. Shout out to time track goal. Again, this webinar is Tuesday, October 29th at 2 p.m. Eastern. The link is going to be in our show notes or you can go visit time track goal. .com and you can go on Facebook and link them to register as well. Let's go. All right. All right, folks. Now we are talking about the money, literally, always the money in California minimum wage. And one of the things that I wanted to share with about California minimum wage is it's complexity. But they get granular by city. So I'll start you off here. Here we go. On May 1st. Well, I don't know why I say my first. On January 1st, 2024, the beginning of this year, California. Initiated, instituted a minimum wage of no less than $16 per hour, regardless of the size of their employer. Well, that's big too. Holy cow. So let me point. Let me. Let's talk about that for a quick moment because employees may not get it. You don't pay attention to it when you're an employee. Some states break it minimum wage down by the size of the employer. Meaning if you're that slow mom and pop, you got four employees and blah, blah, blah. Hey, maybe you can stick to the federal minimum wage. Okay. But if you're a large employer or mid-size employer, depending on how the state breaks it down, then you have to abide by certain rules. How he said, it does not matter what size you are, $16 an hour minimum across the state since January 1st of 2024. So if you are in California and you work as a W to employee, okay, let me qualify that. If you're a 1099 contractor, you make your own rates. There are different things for 1099 contractors. This is not applied. This is a W to employee anywhere in the state, any company in the state, as long as you're working legally, you are entitled to $16 per hour. Here's the catch that I was so excited to share. There are over 40 variables in the state of California, meaning there are 40 locales, state, city, county that pay at different rates. Different minimum wage. A different minimum wage. And for instance, let me see if I can go here real quick. I was just going to throw out a couple examples, right? For instance, in Berkeley County, it's $18.67 minimum wage in Cupertino, 1775 minimum wage. LA, 1678, San Francisco, 1807. I have 1778 for LA. Have you ever been to a webinar where the topic was great, but there wasn't enough time to ask questions or have a dialogue to learn more? Well, welcome to HR Imperial 2.0, the podcast where those post webinar questions become episodes. We feature HR practitioners, leaders and founders of HR, payroll, and workplace innovation and transformation, sharing their insights and lessons learned from the trenches. We dig in to share the knowledge and tips that can help modern HR and payroll leaders navigate the challenges and opportunities ahead. So, join us for highly authentic unscripted conversations and let's learn together. Oh, wow. I'm glad you said that because that is really my point. If you're in California, you need to look up your city, your county's minimum wage to make sure you're good. And let's clarify even one, qualify even one step further. It's where you work, right? You may live in LA, but you work in Cupertino. That's probably not realistic, but you live in one and work in another. It's going to be where you work in that minimum wage is, right? So you can't be like, Oh, my decision, I live in is more. No, the company is that's where it's the minimum wage. Okay. So keep that in mind. If you're a Cali and you're an employee in California, you can look up the minimum wage. And guess what? Berkeley.edu has a awesome breakdown. It will be in the show notes. County is city and county minimum wage ordinances. They're over 40 in California. Okay. It's not only the state. It's broken down by county and city. Yeah, because previously with the minimum wage, I'm so glad you said that about the differences, right? Because they changed that historically. So I think 2022. This was the year before they changed it because 2023 is when they made a level that no matter with size employer, you were going to be paid like 1550. But before that, there was a dollar difference. So if you worked in 2022, if you worked at an employer that had 25 employees or less, that was $14 an hour. If you had 26 or more, that was $15 an hour, right? So you would have to know as the employee, but how many people you have working here? And I'm only getting paid this much. That's a problem. Exactly right. Oh, that's a great call out too. Because remember, Tabitha Brown was on and she said she was paying at the time when she had her restaurant. She was paying her workers way up like way above the minimum wage. Well, and then kind of Cali caught up and started paying more as well. So, yeah, no, and that's why that was my whole point is it could be so different. Make sure you're looking at accurate information. Make sure the website that you use is even though I called out Berkeley's website, you use that to double check it. Hey, Berkeley saying that Los Angeles is this. Let me go look at Los Angeles City's government's website, minimum wage. That's where the truth. That's like the record of truth is the city's website, not another website. Shout out to Berkeley for doing this because it's a dope and it looks very up to date, but you double check it, especially if you're trying to go to your employer and you're going to say, Hey, you're not paying me properly. You want to definitely reference something that they have to abide by as well. Yeah, and look for the employee, right? There's like an example that I gave earlier about Taco Bell, the franchisee that was paint was a short pain, the immigrants and not the non citizen or immigrant employees. Even if you are an immigrant employee, you still have certain rights to absolutely be paid. So absolutely. Yeah. So just employees before I let you before Walt shares the employer piece. I'll let you know, as an employee, check your pay stubs. Look at look at your rates. Look, and in Cali has a very strict. Oh, we should do that too. What has to be on a pay stub in Cali. Let's do that. And then so one is checking pay stub to his report violations. If your employer will lightly go to the employer, I would try. Hey, I would say, Hey, politely go to your employer first. And if they're not responding, report them. And then the last thing, stay informed about the wage increases in your way you are. And it could be just a matter of staying informed people. Hey, look it up every now and then. Hey, you know what? Let me check. It's been a while. Let me check the minimum wage. Make sure it didn't go up or not. Yes, that's it. And look, as the employer, you want to make sure that you're doing the same thing, right? Because this is a change that occurred. Right? It used to be one way a couple of years ago. And now it's different. Like alluded to no matter what the employer size is, the state minimum wage is now raising dollars an hour as of 2022 January 1, 2024. Right. So you want to make sure and do your research as the employer. Just like the employee should do. You want to see what local jurisdiction you are in because they may enforce a higher degree. And employers need to comply with that, right? You either comply, or you fry. I love it. You know what I'm saying? Fly or fry. Yeah. By 2025, California's minimum wage is expected to continue increasing based on inflation. Oh, dang. So that was determined by California's Department of Finance during their annual assessment. So you want to make sure that you're aware of this as an employer and account for any potential increases in your budgeting and your payroll processes. So what are those key considerations compliance? As I just said, comply or fry. That's with both state and local wages. Right? I love it. Comply those laws. Yeah. And then wage compression challenges that occur as wages rise, right? So you may need to adjust wages for higher paid employees to maintain equitable pay structures. I just learned about wage compression this past year, by the way. Me too. Me too. You want to conduct costed payroll audits. That's something you want to do anyway. Yes. If you're right. Yeah. If you're the employee of the payroll pro, there should be orders on your schedule. Yeah. You want to make sure that whether you're in HR or payroll, somebody should be doing this audit to ensure that employees are being paid in accordance with the law, right? And you want to anticipate any increased costs in overtime, right? In any other wage-based benefits that are tied to the minimum wage levels, right? So these are all things that you want to make sure that you're addressing as the employer, right? And look, because if you're not doing right by the employees. Hey, it's Bob Pover, host to you podcast, human centric AI, AI driven transformation, hiring for skills and potential dynamic workforce ecosystems, responsible innovation. These are some of the themes my expert guests and I chat about, and we certainly geek out on the details. Nothing too technical. I hope you check it out. Eventually, somebody is going to, you're going to get the right one there. When I say that, the right one is going to show up and they're going to report everything. And you're going to have to do it anyway. And you're going to take a potentially, as a business, you may take a blow to your company's reputation and people might not want to work for you or anything like that. And it may impact the business. So just do the right thing now. Yeah. Yeah. Come back to you for sure. Sure will. Nice. All right. With that being said, we're going to end it out with our safe talk question. Safe talk. Yep. And then, yeah. So is California's annual inflation based minimum wage adjustment enough to ensure that employees can keep up with the state's high cost of living? Or do we need to a more proactive approach to wage increases? What do you think? Man, for me, look, I think California is already very employee centric. So I think that their finance department of finance is taking that into account already. And they have to balance it out. It just can't go till one way. It's a final, I mean, you said it is. Yeah, it's like on that balance being what the tire rope, you don't know saying you have to balance it out. And you have to be meticulous with it. And you have to do it in the right way, because you lean one way too far to the right. You might fall. It might cause something to break yourself in the gold ride. You know what I'm saying? So I think that they're doing a good job. And look, there's always, no matter what, there's no perfect process. There's no perfect system as of yet, right? That's nothing perfectly. Maybe the eye will help us get closer to that perfection. But look, there's always going to be something that can be done better in a better way. And that's why I think I think that they're doing a good job. I don't know if anything could be done to be more proactive about that. What about you? No, I think that's the answer. Like, I just looked up to see. Oh, there are. Okay. 15 states and the District of Columbia index their minimum wage to inflation, meaning that the minimum wage increases automatically each year based on the course of living. Okay. So there you go, California being one of them. And there's 14 others that do it as well. So that's interesting. Why doesn't every state do it? You know what I mean? So look, now with that being said, the average cost of living in California in 2024. So around $53,000 a year. Okay. So I know minimum wage, $16 an hour. That's about $33,000. So it was a good way to add it to people. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So two people should be able to do it. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I was out in Cali in the last few months as well. And same thing, I was talking to business owners and then they were like, man, I wish my people could buy homes and stuff like that, but like it's so expensive. This area, that area is so expensive. And, you know, it's, and that's the case, a lot of places now. I think post, I think pandemic really messed it up. Although I am seeing like things ton the correct itself, but mandate back to work and they're changing the folks is like, you know, a lot of companies did it right away, right when they were like, Oh, you want to, you moved without telling us. Great. We're going to adjust your salary to where you moved to. Oh, am I working against them too? I guess this is what I'm saying. People took a lot of liberties and pandemic. They were like, Oh, I'm going across the country. I work for remote now. It's not even Yeah, not even thinking that, hey, it might be one day come back to the office. Yeah, there's a lot of auto correction for that. But look, I think they're doing the right thing. They damn in 14 other states are doing it right. Does it solve the problem? No, there's a part of me that believes that the American dream is built on always running for that carrot, right? The carrot or the stick. And you say we're constantly in the hamster room. Yep. Yep. Yep. No matter what. No matter what. And folks that break out of it. But yeah, you know, can you do that when it's just financial freedom. And I heard that once you get a taste of that, find out to freedom, you never want to go back. I believe it. Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. That's it, folks. Check us out for the next one. We're definitely going to do Cali paycheck rules. There are certain rules that folks should, like there are things that have to be on California pay stubs. Other states are not as strict. So let's definitely touch that. Get that for the employees. Keep keeping to it for that. And until the next time, we love you. We love you. Peace. Before we sign off, here are a couple quick things. Don't forget to follow it's about payroll on LinkedIn. And it's about your paycheck on Facebook and TikTok. Thank you for being part of our payroll community. And thank you for being a part of this journey with us. Until the next time, keep learning, keep growing. And most importantly, keep going. Thank you. Thank you. You [BLANK_AUDIO]
California Minimum Wage: Insights, Impacts, and Solutions
In this comprehensive episode of It's About Payroll and It's About Your Paycheck, hosts Brian and Walt delve into the intricacies of California's minimum wage laws, highlighting the importance of understanding local wage variations across different cities and counties. The discussion covers recent trends and societal impacts of minimum wage increases, particularly in the fast food industry. Insights are shared on the positive job growth data and concerns from business owners about higher wages. Notably, the episode reveals a shocking payroll fraud case involving underpaid workers and emphasizes the importance of payroll compliance. Featured resources include Berkeley.edu for accurate wage information and the TimeTrack Go system for efficient payroll management. The episode concludes with a discussion on California's inflation-based wage adjustments and a teaser for upcoming content on paycheck rules and financial insights. Listeners are encouraged to stay informed and follow the show for more valuable payroll-related content.
00:00 Introduction and Greetings
00:40 Casual Conversation and Banter
01:27 Reflections on Life and Success
02:43 AI and Music Industry Controversies
03:46 Hip Hop and Movie Recommendations
06:37 California Minimum Wage Discussion
08:18 Fast Food Industry Wage Issues
10:17 Payroll Fraud and Legal Consequences
12:38 Sponsor Message and Upcoming Webinar
13:48 Exploring Time Track Go Features
14:48 California Minimum Wage Breakdown
16:44 Understanding Local Wage Variations
20:22 Employee Rights and Responsibilities
21:26 Employer Compliance and Challenges
24:14 Safe Talk: Wage Adjustments and Cost of Living
28:11 Closing Remarks and Future Topics
Links/Sources
https://www.fastcompany.com/91212542/when-california-raised-fast-food-wages-jobs-actually-increased-thats-not-what-the-industry-wants-you-to-think
[Wage Theft in California] (https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/dlsepressreleases.htm)
- [Immigrant Workers and Wage Theft](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-20/wage-theft-immigrant-workers-california)
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