Even if your employer violated the law, there may be many reasons not to do anything about it just now. Taking action could result in the loss of your job due to employer retaliation. While it is illegal to retaliate against an employee who makes a good faith complaint about unlawful pay practices, all the law does is provide a remedy after the fact; the law cannot prevent your employer from taking retaliatory action in the first place. You may find yourself out of a job in this terrible economy and unable to find a replacement. No law suit, no matter how successful, can ever give you back the lost time and lost peace of mind that are taken from you during any litigation.

There is an alternative, though it involves waiting. California law requires an employer to pay an employee all accrued wages, vacation, PTO, and ascertainable commissions AT THE TIME the employer ends the employment relationship. If the employee quits without advance notice, the employer has 72 hours to make this payment.

If the employer does not pay as required, there is a penalty against the employer and in favor of the employee: the employee’s pay continues as if the employee were still working, every day until the employer pays in full, up to a maximum of 30 days. The employee is entitled to interest at 10 per cent per annum on the unpaid amount. Also, if the employee must go to court to get his or her pay, then the employee is awarded reasonable attorney’s fees and costs of suit.

So when your employment with this employer ends you can pursue a wage claim or lawsuit if you are not paid everything as required, provided you are still within the time limit (see below).

You will need documentation to support your case. Keep your documentation at home, not at work, to make sure it remains private and doesn't disappear. For documentation: Keep track of all the information related to this situation. Write down the details using names, dates, location, witnesses, times of day – as much as you can. Save copies of any documents.

For every work day, keep a log of all your work time, including the time you start working, the time you stop working, and the start and stop times of any breaks (meal or rest). Time spent walking to or from a time clock is considered work time, not break time. Many people find it helpful to keep this information on a calendar. For every work day, keep track of the actual work duties you perform and how much time you spend on each duty.

When you are ready: The Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) is a sub-agency within the California Department of Industrial Relations. http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/. Some people refer to the DLSE as the Labor Commissioner. The DLSE enforces California's wage and hour laws, including those pertaining to overtime, rest and meal breaks, and more. The link for information on filing a wage claim is here: http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/howtofilewageclaim.htm. You have THREE YEARS from the last day of work to file a Labor Commissioner claim for unpaid wages.

If you pursue a lawsuit in state court, you have the potential to recover unpaid wages going back FOUR YEARS (instead of three) from the date you file suit, per Business & Professions Code sections 17200 et seq.

Your best bet is always to consult one or more experienced employment law attorneys with whom you can discuss the details of your situation and go over your time limits. Please do not rely on general information from a public site such as Avvo.

To find a plaintiffs employment attorney in California, please go to the web site of the California Employment Lawyers Association (CELA). CELA is the largest and most influential bar association in the state for attorneys who represent working people. The web site is www.cela.org. Click on "Find a CELA Member" and you can search by location and practice area. Many CELA attorneys represent clients throughout the state.

I hope there is a good resolution to this situation.

If you can show that the reason your were fired is due to a good faith filing of a wage claim, then you would have a claim for retaliation. One way that courts find that the termination was retaliatory is by temporal proximity [Knowledge of the protected activity and the proximity in time from that knowledge to the adverse action is one factor in determining a causal connection”. Clark County School Dist. v. Breeden (2001) 532 U.S. 268, 274.]. So if you file the wage complaint and get terminated shortly after, without any other obvious reason for your termination, then it will likely be viewed as retaliation.

However, it is possible that your employer is not so blatant and instead finds other ways to make your employment unpleasant. That being said, the Department of Labor and California's Department of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) were created to protect employees from exactly the type of treatment you are dealing with. My advice, if you do decide to file a wage claim, would be to file with California instead of the Federal Department of Labor (See website below).

Perhaps and even stronger way of dealing with this and protecting yourself from retaliation would be to discuss the matter with an employment attorney who could negotiate a claim directly with your employer or guide your through the DLSE's filing process, creating a record and warning your employer against any retaliatory conduct. Most employment attorneys offer free consultations and many of us will also provide contingency fee agreements. Click on an attorneys name on this site, or contact the San Diego County Bar Association for an attorney referral.