Sales Employees

Suppose you’re selling luxury or less than luxury goods. You know, Coach, Disney, Oochi, Gucci, or something else, Sears, for example.

You might be expecting a pretty good income, depending on your sales each payday, based on your promised commission.

But happens if that commission you’re expecting suddenly disappears? Like last year’s favorite clutch?

If you’re a commissioned salesperson in California, you’re entitled to know what commission you’re going to get for selling your employer’s fine goods. That’s easy if you always get a 50% commission (wouldn’t that be great!???).

But what if you don’t know? What if your employer changes the commission rate every day. It would be pretty easy to let you know that morning, right? But suppose your employer decides, for whatever reason, maybe even on a whim, to change how much you’d make by the hour, and not tell you until the end of the day. Or not tell you at all.

In California, at least, it doesn’t get to do that. You’ve got a right to know how much you’ll make on each commissioned sale before you start selling. And, you’re entitled to see how much you earned on each sale as part of your paycheck. So if you have commissions that change during the week, or even the day, and you can’t figure out if you were paid correctly, your employer may owe you money.

So if you work in California, you may be able to collect unpaid wages, depending on your job and your employer, up to six months, or one year, or three years, or four years, depending on the facts of your case.

Right now, we have a case going on behalf of commissioned sales people who worked for Sears in California since August, 2015. Are you thinking, “But Sears filed for bankruptcy!!??” Yes, it did. And yes, we are still going after those wages we think are due from Sears. We’ll see.

Remember – Whether you’re selling Burberry or Blueberries, Kate Spade or Michael Kors, Barbie Kenmore, or Ken Craftsman, if you’re on commission, in California, your employer has to make sure it pays you the commission it promised. And that’s true whether your first name is Michael, Chanel, Christian, Hermes, Marc, Kate, Ken or Barbie, or some other great-selling name.