Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, WAGE-HOUR—WORKING TIME—N.D. Cal.: Electrical construction worker prevails on PAGA claims as to employer-mandated travel time, (Dec 17, 2025)

By Jason Albright, J.D.

Contra Costa Electric failed to pay him and others similarly situated for the time they spent traveling between refinery parking lots and their worksites within two Chevron refineries.

A former employee of Contra Costa Electric is entitled to summary judgment on his California PAGA claim alleging that the electrical contractor failed to pay him and other similarly situated workers for time they spent traveling, both at the beginning and end of the day, between parking lots and their actual worksites within two Chevron refineries, a federal district court found. The court rejected the employer’s contentions that some of the allegedly aggrieved employees’ claims were barred by California Labor Code § 2699.6, which exempts construction workers from PAGA if a labor contract covers wages, hours, and working conditions under some circumstances; or that the scope of the PAGA notice is limited to employees who were required to report to parking lots at specific times. However, the court also rejected the employee’s contention that his PAGA notice fairly implicated failure to compensate for time spent donning or doffing protective gear or equipment (Diaz v. Chevron Corp., No. 25-cv-03327-EMC (N.D. Cal. Dec. 15, 2025)).

Five years of litigation. The court initially observed that the former employee’s case was litigated in state court for approximately five years, during which time he settled his claims against defendants Chevron Corporation and a company called Nooter. At this point, the only remaining defendant was Contra Costa Electric (CCE), an electrical construction firm that had employed him at a Chevron refinery.

In April 2025, CCE removed the case from state to federal court, and the court allowed the removal to stand because the plaintiff did not move for a remand based on untimeliness. Now pending before the court were cross-motions for partial summary judgment targeted at only his claim for violation of the California Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA).

Two Chevron refineries. CCE, according to the court, had its employees work at two different Chevron refineries: one in Richmond, California, and the other in El Segundo. The plaintiff worked at the Richmond refinery from approximately October 2018 to January 2019.

Employer-mandated travel time. According to the plaintiff, CCE violated California wage-hour law primarily because it failed to pay him and others similarly situated for all hours worked. He maintains that CCE failed to pay him and others similarly situated for time they spent traveling between the refinery parking lot/entrance and the actual worksite within the refinery, both at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. He also asserts that, at the end of the day, if employees arrived at the parking lot before the end of the shift time and left the parking lot, their pay would be docked.

PAGA claim. Among the causes of action pleaded in the former employee’s operative first amended complaint (FAC) is a violation of PAGA. The PAGA claim, the court observed, allows him to seek relief on behalf of others besides himself: both those who worked at the Richmond refinery as he did, and those who worked at the El Segundo refinery. In his PAGA notice and original complaint, he mentioned expressly only the Richmond refinery, though he added allegations about the El Segundo refinery in his FAC. Though Chevron, prior to settling with the plaintiff, moved to strike the allegations related to the El Segundo refinery, arguing that such allegations were outside the scope of the PAGA notice, the state court rejected that argument.

California Labor Code § 2699.6. The federal district court first rejected CCE’s argument that some of the allegedly aggrieved employees’ claims were barred by California Labor Code § 2699.6, which exempts construction workers from PAGA if a labor contract covers wages, hours, and working conditions under some circumstances. Section 2699.6 applies if the labor contract (1) has a grievance and arbitration procedure to redress Labor Code violations; (2) clearly waives PAGA; and (3) authorizes the arbitrator to award all remedies available under the Labor Code. However, as the plaintiff argued, CCE litigated for years in state court, engaging in discovery and motion practice, but did not bring up the statute until now.

The federal district court agreed that CCE waived the issue. Although CCE did mention Section 2699.6 in its answer and amended answer, the court found, it was not in the context of making the present argument that Section 2699.6 precludes a PAGA claim from existing in the first instance. CCE also never pursued any assertion regarding Section 2699.6, despite substantively litigating the case on the merits for years in state court without making further mention of the section.

“The entire point of PAGA is to protect the rights of employees,” the court observed. “If an employer sits on its rights and does not promptly seek an arbitral forum for the underlying Labor Code violations, then the employee should be allowed to litigate a PAGA claim as the parties have done here for years before CCE sought to invoke § 2699.6.”

Scope of notice. The court also rejected CCE’s argument that the scope of the PAGA notice was limited to employees who were required to report to parking lots at specific times. Here, the plaintiff argued that CCE was fixating too narrowly on certain language in his PAGA notice, ignoring the broader point asserted in the notice that CCE “require[s] employees to be transported via buses that Chevron owns or controls to the work site each day.”

The court agreed, observing that “a PAGA notice is not required to include every potential fact or theory.” Here, although the plaintiff’s PAGA notice did specifically mention employees being required to report to a parking lot at a specific time, he also “clearly implicated the broader practice of failing to compensate for ‘employer-mandated travel time,’” and CCE’s attempt to limit such employer-mandated travel time “is inconsistent with the liberal treatment that should be afforded PAGA notices.”

No donning and doffing. Finally, however, the court rejected the plaintiff’s contention that failure to compensate for time spent donning and doffing protective gear or equipment was also part of his lawsuit. “The subject of the PAGA notice is clearly employer-mandated travel time,” the court observed. “Failure to compensate for travel time is markedly different from failure to compensate for time donning or doffing,” and the court found “no apparent reason” why the plaintiff did not mention, or could not have mentioned, donning or doffing in his PAGA notice.

The case is No. 25-cv-03327-EMC.

Judge: Chen, E.

Attorneys: Jahan C. Sagafi (Outten & Golden) for Carlos Diaz. Elise Gabriella Dvorochkin (Jackson Lewis) for Chevron Corp. and Contra Costa Electric, Inc.

Companies: Chevron Corp.; Contra Costa Electric, Inc.

Cases: WageHour ClassActions WorkingTime StateLawClaims CaliforniaNews