PAGA

What does “PAGA” mean?

PAGA is the California Private Attorneys General Act, which allows an employee to bring an action for Labor Code penalties on behalf of the state and other aggrieved employees.

Its significance for employers is structural: a PAGA action can reach a workforce-wide group even where individual claims would be small, and it interacts differently with arbitration agreements than an ordinary claim does.

Because penalties attach per employee and per pay period, technical violations that would be trivial individually can aggregate substantially.

Why it matters to an employer

This is the mechanism that turns a paperwork problem (a defective wage statement, say) into a meaningful number.