Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) has announced that thousands of customers may be affected during the upcoming wildfire season by Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPSs) throughout throughout PG&E’s service territory.  These outages my impact hundreds for customers for perhaps several days.  PG&E comtemplates these outages when weather conditions, including “red flag” wind conditions are believed to be conducive to wildfires.

Employers should be aware that Section 5(A) of Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Orders (including those mostly likely to impact agricultural operations: Wage Order 14, “Agricultural Occupations;” Wage Order 13, “Industries preparing agricultural products for the market, on the farm;” and Wage Order 8, “Industries handling products after harvest”) provides for reporting time pay for employees who report to work but are not provided work:

Each workday an employee is required to report for work and does report, but is not put to work or is furnished less than half said employee’s usual or scheduled day’s work, the employee shall be paid for half the usual or scheduled day’s work, but in no event for less than two (2) hours nor more than four (4) hours, at the employee’s regular rate of pay, which shall not be less than the minimum wage.

However, the general requirement to provide reporting time pay does not apply in certain situations — including, “…when… (p)ublic utilities fail to supply electricity, water, or gas, or there is a failure in the public utilities, or sewer system.”This means you are not obliged to pay employees reporting time pay as required by Section 5(A) of IWC Orders if work is unavailable due to the PG&E outages.

Exempt employees are required to be treated differently than hourly employees in this situation.  An exempt employee must be paid for the full day on a day that they perform any work. Even if a business was shut down for an entire day, an exempt employee must still be paid for the week if they performed any work during that workweek, and was ready, able, and willing to work on the day of the shutdown.

To avoid misunderstandings with your employees, you should make reasonable efforts to inform employees who may be scheduled to work tomorrow or on subsequent days that work may not be available in the absence of electrical service. 

If you have questions or concerns, please contact us at 800-753-9073 or info@fels.net.