If a California employer requires a training session or a staff meeting, the time is usually paid. The wage orders define hours worked as “the time during which an employee is subject to the control of an employer, and includes all the time the employee is suffered or permitted to work, whether or not required to do so,” as quoted in Frlekin v. Apple Inc. (2020) 8 Cal.5th 1038. Unpaid training hours lead to minimum wage and overtime claims. The defense is showing the activity was optional in fact.
Is required training time hours worked in California?
Yes. An employee the company directs to attend is under its control, and control alone makes the time compensable.
The definition has two parts, and either one is enough. In Morillion v. Royal Packing Co. (2000) 22 Cal.4th 575, the court described them as “independent factors, each of which defines whether certain time spent is compensable as ‘hours worked.’” It followed that “an employee who is subject to an employer’s control does not have to be working during that time to be compensated.” The farmworkers in Morillion were riding a company bus to the fields. They weren’t picking anything, and the time was still paid.
Training fits the same pattern. When a manager sets the time and the place of a session and tells employees to be there, the company has decided “when, where, and how” the employees spend that time, the phrase the Morillion court used for the required bus ride. It doesn’t matter that the employees are sitting in a conference room instead of doing their usual jobs.
The overtime math follows. Under Labor Code section 510, “Any work in excess of eight hours in one workday” is paid at no less than time and a half, absent an alternative workweek schedule. A two-hour safety meeting tacked onto a full shift is two hours of overtime.
Does the federal training-time rule help a California employer?
Not much. It decides the federal claim but not the California one.
Federal law has a specific exception. Under 29 C.F.R. section 785.27, “Attendance at lectures, meetings, training programs and similar activities need not be counted as working time if the following four criteria are met.” Attendance has to be outside regular hours and “in fact voluntary.” The course can’t be “directly related to the employee’s job,” and the employee can’t do productive work during it.
California’s wage orders contain their own definition, and it doesn’t mention training at all. The Supreme Court of California has been blunt about borrowing federal rules to narrow it. In Morillion, the court concluded “that the federal statutory scheme, which differs substantially from the state scheme, should be given no deference.” In Frlekin, it said a federal Portal-to-Portal Act decision “does not guide our analysis.”
That doesn’t make the federal factors useless. Whether attendance was voluntary, and whether the course relates to the job, are the same facts a California court weighs when it asks whether the employer controlled the time. An employer that can satisfy all four federal criteria is usually in decent shape under the control test too. An employer relying on the federal rule as its only answer to a California claim isn’t.
What about training the law requires, like harassment prevention?
Treat it as paid time. Government Code section 12950.1 says an employer with five or more employees “shall provide sexual harassment training and education to each employee in California once every two years.” The statute puts the obligation on the employer, and the employer is the one telling employees to complete the course.
An argument that the state required the training, so the company didn’t control the time, is hard to make with a straight face. The same goes for workplace violence prevention training, food handler courses the company requires, and safety briefings. The firm’s guide to a harassment investigation discusses why completion records for this training matter in a harassment case. They matter in a wage case too, because a timestamped certificate of completion is evidence of when the employee did the work.
Can an employer make training optional and leave it unpaid?
Yes, if the training really is optional. The cases draw the line at genuine choice.
Morillion itself said employers “do not risk paying employees for their travel time merely by providing them transportation,” and that “Time employees spend traveling on transportation that an employer provides but does not require its employees to use may not be compensable.” The same logic applies to an optional evening seminar or a voluntary lunch-and-learn.
Labels don’t settle it. In Frlekin, Apple argued its retail employees chose to bring bags to work and could avoid the exit searches. The court rejected the argument, holding that time “waiting for, and undergoing, mandatory exit searches of bags, packages, or personal Apple technology devices, such as iPhones, voluntarily brought to work purely for personal convenience is compensable as ‘hours worked.’” It also rejected Apple’s reading that Morillion requires every employer-controlled activity to be “unavoidably required” before it counts.
So “optional” has to be true in practice. If attendance is tracked, if managers mention it in reviews, or if promotions depend on it, a court is likely to find control. And the suffered-or-permitted half of the definition reaches work the company didn’t ask for but knew about. Frlekin noted that this clause applies to an employee who isn’t under the employer’s control, “provided the employer has or should have knowledge of the employee” doing the work. An online module that employees finish at home after clocking out, with completion logs on the company’s own system, is the classic example. The firm’s post on timeclock rounding and off-the-clock claims covers how those claims are built and defended.
| Activity | Likely treatment | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Required onboarding or orientation | Paid | The employer sets the time and place |
| Mandatory staff or safety meeting | Paid, and counts toward overtime | Control test; Labor Code § 510 |
| Harassment prevention training | Paid | Gov. Code § 12950.1 obligates the employer, and the employer directs attendance |
| Online module finished at home off the clock | Paid if the employer knew or should have known | Suffered-or-permitted clause |
| Voluntary after-hours seminar, unrelated to the job | Often unpaid | No control; federal factors align |
| Optional benefit the employee can skip with no consequence | Often unpaid | Morillion’s optional-transportation reasoning |
What to do when a claim about unpaid training arrives
- Preserve the training records: learning management system logs, sign-in sheets, calendar invites, completion certificates, the timekeeping data for the same days, and every version of the training and timekeeping policies.
- Calendar the response date on the demand, PAGA notice, or complaint, and check for an arbitration agreement and an employment practices liability (EPLI) policy with notice requirements.
- Identify the managers who scheduled or announced the training and the HR staff who track completion, and make sure no one treats the employee who raised the issue differently.
- Pull the documents the claim depends on: what employees were told about attendance, whether completion was tracked or tied to reviews, and whether the sessions fell inside or outside paid shifts.
- Talk to a lawyer before paying back wages, changing the training program, or contacting the employee or the employee’s lawyer about the claim.
A company that finds unpaid training time in its own records has choices about how to fix it going forward and what to do about the past. Making those choices with wage and hour defense for California employers in mind, instead of in a hurry, usually reduces the exposure in the claim that’s already pending.
FAQ
Do we have to pay for a staff meeting held before the shift starts?
Yes, if attendance is required. Time spent in a required meeting is time under the employer’s control, whether it happens before, during, or after the scheduled shift. If the meeting pushes the employee past eight hours that day, the extra time is overtime under Labor Code section 510. Clocking employees in before the meeting is the simplest fix, and the time records then prove the time was paid.
Is time spent on an online training module at home compensable?
Usually yes. If the company assigns the module, the time is under its control. Even if the company didn’t assign it, the wage order’s suffered-or-permitted clause covers work the employer knows or should know about, and a learning management system that logs completion times gives the employer that knowledge. Employers should require that assigned modules be completed on paid time.
Does federal law’s four-part training test protect a California employer?
It protects the employer from a federal Fair Labor Standards Act claim when all four criteria are met. It doesn’t decide a California wage order claim, because the Supreme Court of California has declined to give federal rules deference when interpreting hours worked. Those federal factors still describe facts that help show the employer didn’t control the time.
If your company faces an unpaid training time claim
If your company has received a demand letter, PAGA notice, or lawsuit claiming unpaid training or meeting time, the training logs and the attendance policy usually decide how much of the claim is real. Rosenberger + Kawabata represents employers defending employment lawsuits and claims through its business litigation practice, including claims involving unpaid training time and off-the-clock work. Contact Rosenberger + Kawabata online for a confidential consultation, or call (310) 894-6921.
Sources
The California decisions are Morillion v. Royal Packing Co. (2000) 22 Cal.4th 575 and Frlekin v. Apple Inc. (2020) 8 Cal.5th 1038. The statutes are Labor Code section 510 and Government Code section 12950.1. The federal regulation is 29 C.F.R. section 785.27.
This post is general information about California and federal employment law as of November 7, 2026. It is not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Employment statutes, regulations, and court decisions change often, and the outcome of any claim depends on its facts. Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.