(light electronica music)
- So one of the.
This year they've changed a little bit,
every year they do change a little bit.
And the minimum wage changes
every year pretty much
here in L.A.
So, what is your advice
and words of wisdom.
- How absolutely.
- Experience that, yeah.
- First reason being that
they happen to be tenants,
so you have landlord tenant law.
But on the other hand, you have labor law
because they're an actual
employee of your company
or of the owner.
And what I've found is that most owners
or property management
companies don't understand that.
So they go about having an onsite manager
while not actually following the law.
That can leave.
- Even though they think
they're following the law,
they're not following the law
because it's so complicated.
- Correct, correct.
They don't actually even
know that a law exists
to protect specifically onsite managers.
That law happens to be written
up in wage order number five,
which is called the
Public Housekeeping Order.
It goes into all the specifics
of how to deal with onsite management,
how the minimum wage and hour laws
actually apply to onsite managers.
- And you have to actually be a lawyer
to understand it practically,
I mean, I have been in
this business for 25-years.
When the new law came out this year
and it was five pages
long, I read all of it
and it even seemed to contradict itself
or give same exact numbers for
completely different things.
And even I felt confused after reading it,
so I think it's really
hard on the average owner
to just figure out which
one is the right one
and make sure that it's right.
They go to the apartment association,
they print out whatever's there
and that may not necessarily
be the proper one
for the number of units they have.
Because that is critical,
whether it's under 16, over 16,
'cause it's a different
onsite manager agreement
if you have under 16 and then over
and then exempt versus not exempt.
There's so many aspects to it.
- Yes, labor law can be like
reading Greek to a non-Greek.
It very strict in it's labor laws,
which means that if you
don't actually abide
or act within the bounds.
And sanctions and massive litigation.
So to make it very simple,
some of the things that an owner can do.
Or more.
Second, record keeping.
There should be time sheets
provided to the owner
whether it's on a weekly
basis or bi-weekly basis.
- Or property manager, right?
- Or property management.
Then, what you wanna have
to further insulate yourself
is a monthly certification of time.
That would be useful for your manager
to be certifying in writing
the number of hours they
worked the preceding month.
And it's, when I was first told about this
it sounded really complicated,
but really what it is
is a sentence that just says,
I certify these hours are true
and correct, is that right?
- That's correct.
That is useful because in the event
that you have an onsite manager who then
wants to make a wage an hour claim
and not only sues the owner,
but also wants to sue the
property management company,
you have a record of what
hours they actually worked.
Because wage an hour claims
can be very, very huge,
they can be very litigious and
they can be extremely costly.
Because like I said before,
California laws are very unforgiving
when it comes to employment law.
- Because it calculates
the first eight hours
and then if they're actually
getting charged 24 hours,
it's double time, triple time
and then it goes past
40-hours to the sixth day,
the seventh day and that's
how they get into all.
- Subtleties do not stop.
There is just, they rack up
and attorneys who get wind
of these types of suits
love them.
- And the tenant doesn't
even have to bring it
to a lawyer necessarily,
can even go straight to the labor board.
- That's right,
the labor commissioner
will also be very helpful
and very protective of the employee
in these types of situations.
- Right.
I was I think confused
enough by the labor law,
especially with our case we
had recently with an employee
that they wanted to work out
amicably and put behind us.
So you were nice enough to go in
and speak to the labor board
about what we should and shouldn't have.
And it is a complicated process.
And I definitely would
recommend to any of my clients
that, well, I shouldn't
even say my clients
because I already do it for my clients,
but I would recommend to
anyone who owns a building.
That they have this particular
agreement done, signed
and then backed up and documented properly
with the certification that you spoke of.
- And once you understand that,
if you already have an agreement in place
with your onsite manager, review it.
Review it for whether or not
it is an actual compliance with the law
because chances are it's not.
- Right, and you can always
redo your manager agreement,
have 'em sign a new one.
And one of the things that I like to do
when I sign a new agreement
or I bring on a manager
from another company
is I have 'em sign a release saying,
they're not owed anything at that point
of signing the agreement,
so that you go forward with a clean slate.
- Always protect yourself from liability.
So in closing, as far the
wage an hour claims go that
can result from having an onsite manager,
you want to have a very well
drafted employment contract
and you wanna make sure
that all of your record keeping is intact.
On a weekly, biweekly
and/or monthly basis.
- We certainly have
appreciated and benefited from
having legal counsel onsite and with us
and hopefully now all of you
have benefited from her advice.
And we hope to continue
doing these segments,
so that you all learn more
from what we experience
on a day-to-day basis.
And I think given the
number of units we have,
we probably encounter a lot more
than some of the smaller owners
and so, hopefully you can
learn from our mistakes
and Sky Properties is
here when you need us.
Thank you for watching us
today, please go to getsky.net.
