Experienced Employment Attorneys Serving Pomona Workers
Workers in Pomona deserve legal representation that puts their interests first. Abramson Labor Group handles employment cases exclusively on behalf of employees — never employers — and charges nothing upfront. If we don’t win, you don’t pay.
Pomona sits on the eastern edge of Los Angeles County, a city of nearly 148,000 people with deep roots in healthcare, education, manufacturing, and a growing logistics sector. Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center is the city’s largest private employer with over 3,200 workers. The Pomona Unified School District employs another 3,000. Cal Poly Pomona brings 2,400 jobs and a pipeline of skilled graduates. Fairplex — home to the LA County Fair — and Casa Colina Centers for Rehabilitation round out the city’s major institutional employers. Add in the manufacturing plants, distribution operations, restaurants, and retail businesses throughout the city, and Pomona’s economy supports a broad and diverse workforce.
That workforce is approximately 71 percent Hispanic, 11 percent Asian, and 10 percent White. The median household income is around $79,000. And when employers in this city cut corners — on pay, on safety, on equal treatment — our firm steps in.
Over 35 years of combined experience. More than 500 five-star Google reviews. Five attorneys named to Super Lawyers and Rising Stars. A unanimous jury verdict in a retaliation case.
Schedule a free consultation: (213) 493-6300
Wrongful Termination Claims
Not every firing is legal. California’s at-will doctrine allows employers to end the employment relationship, but it does not permit terminations driven by illegal motives. If you lost your job because you belong to a protected class, because you reported illegal conduct, because you filed for workers’ compensation, because you took legally protected leave, or because you refused to participate in something unlawful, the termination may give rise to a lawsuit.
The strongest wrongful termination cases often involve suspicious timing — a complaint followed weeks later by a sudden “performance” issue that never existed before. If that sounds familiar, we should talk.
Available damages: lost wages (past and future), compensation for emotional suffering, punitive damages designed to punish the employer, and coverage of your legal fees.
Wage and Hour Violations
California’s wage laws leave little room for ambiguity. Hourly workers earn overtime — 1.5 times their regular rate — for every hour past eight in a single day or forty in a week. Hours beyond twelve in a day are paid at double the regular rate. Employers must track time accurately, issue detailed pay stubs, reimburse work-related expenses, and pay all final wages immediately upon termination.
Despite the clarity of these rules, violations are routine in Pomona. Manufacturing workers see overtime lumped into straight-time calculations. Warehouse employees along the I-10 corridor clock in early for mandatory meetings but aren’t paid until their “official” start time. Construction crews receive flat project-based pay with no overtime component. Restaurant and retail staff perform setup and closing tasks off the clock.
Each of these practices is illegal. Affected workers can recover three years of back wages, statutory penalties for inaccurate pay stubs, up to 30 days of waiting time penalties if final pay was late, interest, and attorneys’ fees.
Denied Meal Periods and Rest Breaks
Under California law, a worker who puts in more than five hours is entitled to an uninterrupted 30-minute meal period — off duty, off premises if desired, and free from any work obligations. A second meal period is required after ten hours. Separately, every four hours of work triggers a right to a paid ten-minute rest period. Employers who fail to provide these breaks owe an extra hour of pay for each violation, each day.
Pomona employers violate these rules in predictable ways. Hospital staff at Pomona Valley Hospital and Casa Colina are called back from breaks to respond to patient needs. Production workers in manufacturing facilities eat at their stations because the line keeps running. Event staff at Fairplex during the County Fair and NHRA events work through meal periods because of crowd demands. Retail workers are told to stay near the register during their “break.”
None of these situations satisfy California’s break requirements. The premium pay adds up quickly over months and years of violations.
Discrimination in the Workplace
California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act makes it unlawful for employers to make job-related decisions based on a worker’s race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, religion, marital status, genetic information, or military service. The law covers every stage of employment — from hiring through termination — and applies to any employer with five or more people on payroll.
In a city where more than seven out of ten residents are Hispanic, discrimination based on national origin and language is not hypothetical. Workers are passed over for leadership roles in favor of less-qualified candidates from different backgrounds. Employees who speak Spanish among themselves are reprimanded while English-speaking employees face no equivalent restriction. Discipline is applied unevenly along racial or ethnic lines. These patterns, documented over time, form the basis of actionable discrimination claims.
Remedies under FEHA are broad: back pay, future lost earnings, damages for emotional harm, and punitive damages — with no statutory cap limiting what a jury can award.
Harassment at Work
Workplace harassment tied to any protected characteristic — sex, race, national origin, age, disability, religion, or others — violates California law. The legal standard distinguishes between two forms: quid pro quo, where a person in authority demands sexual favors in exchange for job benefits, and hostile work environment, where pervasive or severe conduct makes the workplace intimidating or abusive.
An employer is automatically on the hook when a supervisor engages in harassment. When the source is a coworker, vendor, or customer, the employer becomes liable once it learns of the problem — or reasonably should have learned — and fails to intervene. Going to HR is not a prerequisite to filing a legal claim. Under SB 331, California’s Silenced No More Act, employers cannot use confidentiality agreements to suppress reports of harassment, discrimination, or retaliation.
Retaliation Against Employees
California law shields workers who stand up for their rights. Reporting unpaid wages, filing a harassment complaint, requesting family or medical leave, submitting a workers’ comp claim, or flagging safety hazards — all of these are protected activities. An employer who responds to any of them with adverse action — firing, demotion, hour reductions, schedule manipulation, unwarranted write-ups, or hostile reassignment — has committed retaliation.
Several overlapping statutes provide this protection. Section 1102.5 of the Labor Code guards whistleblowers. FEHA protects workers who report discrimination or harassment. Section 98.6 covers employees who file wage complaints. Section 132a addresses retaliation tied to workers’ comp claims. CFRA and FMLA protect leave-takers.
Courts look at the sequence of events. If your employer had no issue with your performance until the day after you filed a complaint, that timeline becomes your strongest piece of evidence.
Misclassification as Exempt or Independent Contractor
Employers save significant money by labeling workers “exempt” or “independent contractor” — classifications that, when applied incorrectly, strip employees of overtime pay, break protections, workers’ comp coverage, and unemployment benefits.
California sets a high bar for exempt status: the worker must earn at least $70,720 annually and must devote the majority of their working hours to genuinely executive, administrative, or professional tasks. Titles like “manager,” “coordinator,” or “lead” mean nothing if the actual work is operational, manual, or technical.
For independent contractor classification, California’s ABC test (Labor Code § 2775) starts from the presumption that every worker is an employee. The hiring company must prove three things: that the worker operates free from the company’s control, that the work falls outside the company’s core business, and that the worker maintains an independently established trade. In Pomona’s manufacturing, logistics, and construction sectors, misclassified workers are common — and the back pay they’re owed is often substantial.
On-the-Job Injuries
California mandates workers’ compensation insurance for every employer in the state. When a worker is injured — whether from a single incident like a fall or equipment malfunction, or from repetitive stress that develops over months or years — the system provides medical care, wage replacement during recovery, permanent disability benefits if the injury causes lasting limitations, and job retraining assistance.
Pomona’s dominant industries produce familiar injury patterns. Healthcare workers sustain back injuries from patient handling. Manufacturing employees suffer hand, arm, and shoulder injuries from repetitive assembly tasks. Construction workers face falls, equipment strikes, and heat-related illness. Warehouse workers deal with lifting injuries, forklift accidents, and cumulative strain.
Filing a workers’ comp claim is a protected activity. If your employer discourages you from filing, delays providing the required claim form, or retaliates in any way after you report an injury, each of those responses constitutes a separate legal violation.
Protections Regardless of Immigration Status
Every labor protection described on this page extends to every worker in California, without exception, regardless of immigration status. This principle is codified in Labor Code § 244. Employers who weaponize a worker’s immigration status — by threatening to contact authorities, demanding documents beyond what the law requires, or using status as leverage to suppress complaints — face penalties of $10,000 per incident under Section 1019.
Pomona’s workforce includes a large immigrant community. Many of these workers are employed in industries — manufacturing, food service, construction, janitorial services — where exploitation is most common and fear of retaliation is highest. The law was written to reach exactly these situations.
We provide consultations in Spanish and other languages.
Personal Injury Representation
Beyond employment law, our firm represents Pomona residents injured by the negligence of others. Vehicle collisions on the I-10 and SR-71, pedestrian accidents, premises liability, product defects, and wrongful death — if someone else’s carelessness caused your injury, you may be entitled to recover your medical costs, lost earnings, and compensation for pain and suffering.
Our Process
Consultation. We start with a phone call. You describe the situation. We assess the legal claims available to you and give you an honest evaluation of your case’s strength and value. There is no charge for this conversation.
Case building. Our team collects payroll records, timekeeping data, personnel files, internal communications, and witness accounts. We reconstruct the facts and match them against the statutes your employer violated.
Resolution. Some cases settle through negotiation or mediation. Others require litigation. We have the trial experience — including a unanimous jury verdict — to pursue either path with confidence.
Fee structure. Pure contingency. We advance all costs. You owe us nothing unless we recover money for you.
Areas We Serve in and Around Pomona
Our firm represents employees throughout Pomona and the eastern San Gabriel Valley, including Downtown Pomona, the Pomona Arts Colony, North Pomona, South Pomona, Phillips Ranch, the Cal Poly Pomona campus area, the Fairplex area, Indian Hill, Ganesha Hills, and the I-10 industrial corridor. We also handle cases for workers in Claremont, La Verne, San Dimas, Diamond Bar, Walnut, West Covina, Montclair, Chino, and communities throughout eastern Los Angeles County and western San Bernardino County.
Our office is at 1700 W Burbank Blvd, Burbank, CA 91506. We file cases in every county in California, and Pomona workers benefit from the proximity of the LA County Superior Court — Pomona Courthouse (South District), which handles civil matters locally.
Common Questions from Pomona Workers
A termination is wrongful when the true reason behind it is illegal — discrimination based on a protected characteristic, punishment for exercising a legal right, or refusal to comply with an unlawful directive. Even in an at-will state, these motives make a firing actionable.
Three years under the Labor Code. In some cases, four years under the Unfair Competition Law (Business & Professions Code § 17200). The further back you can reach, the larger the recovery — which is why acting quickly matters.
No. Nurses, technicians, aides, and other healthcare employees are entitled to the same meal and rest breaks as all California workers. Some employers claim a healthcare exemption, but the requirements for that exemption are narrow and most facilities do not qualify.
Absolutely. Cash payment does not exempt any employer from California labor law. The absence of pay stubs is itself a violation — worth $50 for the initial offense and $100 per pay period after that. Your own records of hours and payments are sufficient to support a claim.
California law makes it illegal for your employer to retaliate against you for asserting your rights. Many of our clients come to us while still employed. In fact, being employed at the time you raise an issue can strengthen a retaliation claim if your employer responds with adverse action.
Contingency only. We don’t bill hourly. We don’t require a retainer. If your case doesn’t result in a recovery, you owe us nothing.
What Sets Abramson Labor Group Apart
Employee-side only. We have never represented an employer and never will. There is no conflict of interest in our practice.
Track record. Five hundred five-star reviews aren’t accumulated by accident. Five Super Lawyers and Rising Stars aren’t awarded without results. A unanimous jury verdict isn’t achieved without preparation and conviction.
Full-service employment practice. Wrongful termination, wage theft, discrimination, harassment, retaliation, whistleblower protection, misclassification, workers’ comp disputes, and personal injury — we handle the complete spectrum under one roof.
Multilingual access. We consult with clients in Spanish and other languages, because a language barrier should never stand between a worker and their legal rights.
No financial risk to you. Contingency representation means we invest our time and resources into your case. You invest nothing unless we deliver a result.
Speak with a Pomona Employment Lawyer Now
Every day you wait is a day closer to a deadline. Wage claims, discrimination charges, PAGA actions, and workers’ comp filings all have statutes of limitations that, once expired, eliminate your ability to recover — no matter how strong the underlying case. A single phone call can preserve your rights and set the process in motion.
Phone: (213) 493-6300 Address: 1700 W Burbank Blvd, Burbank, CA 91506 Hours: Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM – 6:00 PM Website: abramsonlaborgroup.com
Free consultations. No fees unless we win. Serving Pomona, the San Gabriel Valley, and every county in California.