Reference · Glossary

The words the statute turns on.

The working vocabulary of a PAGA claim: each term defined plainly and tied to the subdivision that governs it, so the notice on your desk reads in plain English.

Reflects California law as of July 13, 2026.Definitions reflect the post-2024 reform — AB 2288 (Stats. 2024, Ch. 44) and SB 92 (Stats. 2024, Ch. 45), signed July 1, 2024. The statute now carries an AB 1170 (eff. Jan. 1, 2026) stamp, but AB 1170 was the Legislature’s annual code-maintenance bill and changed nothing of substance — no penalty tier, cap, split, cure track, or standing rule.

A

Aggrieved employee#: A worker who was employed by the alleged violator and personally suffered each of the violations they allege — the standing rule for a PAGA plaintiff under the 2024 reform. (One narrow exception: in an action filed by a qualifying nonprofit legal aid organization, § 2699(c)(2) keeps the looser pre-reform standard — one or more of the alleged violations.)Lab. Code § 2699(c)(1)–(2)
All reasonable steps#: The compliance effort an employer must show to earn the 15% or 30% penalty cap — judged by the totality of the circumstances, and which may include payroll audits, lawful written policies, supervisor training, and corrective action.Lab. Code § 2699(g)(2)

C

Civil penalty#: A money penalty the State could have assessed for a Labor Code violation — separate from the wages an employee is owed, and the only thing PAGA actually collects.Lab. Code § 2699(f)
Cure#: Not a technicality but a real fix: the employer corrects the violation, comes into compliance, and makes every affected worker whole — three years of back wages, 7% interest, any liquidated damages, plus the workers' attorney's fees.Lab. Code § 2699(d)(1)

D

Derivative penalty#: A penalty that flows from an underlying wage violation — such as a late-final-pay or wage-statement penalty caused by the unpaid wages — which the reform bars from being stacked on top of the penalty for that same underlying violation.Lab. Code § 2699(i)

E

Exhaustion#: The requirement to complete the pre-suit steps — file the LWDA notice, pay the fee, and let the State's window pass — before a PAGA lawsuit may be filed; no notice, no suit.Lab. Code § 2699.3(a)

H

Headcount#: How many people the employer employed during the period the notice covers — the line that sorts cases into cure tracks, with fewer than 100 employees pointing to the administrative cure and 100 or more to the court's early evaluation conference.Lab. Code § 2699.3(c)(2)(A)

L

Liquidated damages#: A fixed extra amount some Labor Code provisions add on top of unpaid wages (often equal to the wages owed); where a statute requires them, they are part of making an employee whole in a cure.Lab. Code § 2699(d)(1)
Lodestar#: A fee figure calculated from the hours reasonably worked multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate — the measure of the attorney's fees an employer must pay as part of a cure.Lab. Code § 2699(d)(1)
LWDA#: The Labor and Workforce Development Agency — the state agency that receives the pre-suit notice, may choose to investigate, and collects 65% of any penalties recovered.Lab. Code § 2699(m)

M

Manageability#: Whether a sprawling representative claim can actually be tried; after Estrada, a court may trim a PAGA claim's evidence or scope to make it triable, but may not dismiss it as unmanageable.Lab. Code § 2699(p)

P

PAGA#: The Labor Code Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 — the law that lets an employee, standing in for the State as a 'private attorney general,' sue to enforce the Labor Code.Lab. Code § 2698
Pay period#: One payroll cycle (weekly, biweekly, or semimonthly); because penalties run 'per aggrieved employee, per pay period,' the number of pay periods is the multiplier that turns a small error into a large number.Lab. Code § 2699(f)(2)
Personally suffered each#: The 2024 standing rule: a plaintiff may sue only over violations they personally experienced, and no longer over violation types that happened only to other workers.Lab. Code § 2699(c)(1)

R

Representative action#: A suit one employee brings on the State's behalf to recover penalties for an entire workforce — which, unlike a class action, needs no class certification.Lab. Code § 2699(a)
Retaliation#: Punishing a worker — firing, demoting, threatening, cutting hours — for exercising Labor Code rights. Initiating or testifying in a PAGA action is expressly protected activity, adverse action within 90 days of it is presumed retaliatory, and the complaint runs on its own one-year clock with the Labor Commissioner.Lab. Code §§ 98.6, 98.7(a)(1)

T

Tolling#: A pause on the clock for filing suit; the pre-suit notice period suspends PAGA's limitations deadline so the time spent waiting on the State does not run against the employee.Lab. Code § 2699.3(e)

How to use this

Each definition is one sentence, tied to the subdivision it comes from — the same gloss the inline terms across the treatise open to.