Ward v. United Airlines, Inc., 9 Cal.5th 732

Plaintiffs are California-based United Airlines pilots and flight attendants who are covered by a Railway Labor Act (RLA) collective bargaining agreement and work mostly outside California airspace.
Plaintiffs alleged United’s semimonthly wage statements violated Labor Code § 226 by failing to list a street address and by not itemizing hours worked and applicable hourly rates.
District courts granted summary judgment to United applying a “job situs” test and concluding class members did not work principally in California; the Ninth Circuit certified two questions to the California Supreme Court.
Key legal context: IWC Wage Order No. 9 (transportation) exempts employees covered by RLA collective bargaining agreements from the wage order’s requirements, but § 226 contains no parallel exemption and has been expanded repeatedly by the Legislature.
The California Supreme Court was asked (1) whether the Wage Order No. 9 RLA exemption bars § 226 claims, and (2) whether § 226 applies to employees who reside and receive pay in California but do not principally work in any single state.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Wage Order No. 9’s RLA exemption bars § 226 claims	Ward: The wage-order exemption should preclude § 226 claims for employees covered by an RLA CBA	United: The IWC exemption should be imported into § 226 to avoid conflict between statute and wage order	Rejected. The RLA exemption in Wage Order No. 9 does not bar § 226 claims; the Legislature did not include such an exemption in § 226 and courts should not import it.
Geographic scope of § 226 for interstate workers	Ward: Residence, receipt of pay, and tax payments in California (and being HQ’d here) support applying § 226	United: Applying California law to workers who principally work outside CA would be extraterritorial and inappropriate; job situs should govern	Held: § 226 applies if employee’s principal place of work is California — satisfied by majority of work in CA; for interstate transportation workers who do not work a majority in any one state, it applies if California is the worker’s base of operations (home base). Residence, receipt of pay, and tax payment are not controlling.

Mobil Oil Corp. v. International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America (Oil Workers), 426 U.S. 407 (U.S. 1976) (job-situs concept for interstate workers)
Tidewater Marine Western, Inc. v. Bradshaw, 14 Cal.4th 557 (Cal. 1996) (discussing extraterritorial limits and intraterritorial application of state employment law)
Sullivan v. Oracle Corp., 51 Cal.4th 1191 (Cal. 2011) (analyzing when California employment statutes apply to nonresidents working in California)
Collins v. Overnite Transportation Co., 105 Cal.App.4th 171 (Cal. Ct. App. 2003) (refusing overtime relief where wage-order exemptions were ratified differently in statute)
Brinker Restaurant Corp. v. Superior Court, 53 Cal.4th 1004 (Cal. 2012) (harmonizing IWC wage orders and Labor Code provisions)
Dynamex Operations West, Inc. v. Superior Court, 4 Cal.5th 903 (Cal. 2018) (remedial construction of California labor statutes)
EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Co., 499 U.S. 244 (U.S. 1991) (presumption against extraterritorial application of law)
Bernstein v. Virgin America, Inc., 227 F. Supp. 3d 1049 (N.D. Cal. 2017) (proposed multifactor approach considering residence, pay receipt, and tax factors)