Requests in writing: the letters the statutes already wrote for you
The Law Office of Arthur Karadzhyan
California gives workers a set of information rights that require no lawyer, no lawsuit, and no explanation of motive — just a dated sentence in writing. Here are the five that matter, ready to send. Every one of them is protected activity.
How to use this page. Send by email where possible; keep a copy and note the date. No motive is required and offering one adds nothing. If a deadline passes without response, do not chase angrily — note it and tell us; missed statutory deadlines are evidence, and several carry penalties.
1 · Your personnel file and pay records
Deadline: 30 days (file) · 21 days (pay records). Right: current and former employees.
Under Labor Code sections 1198.5 and 226(b), I request a copy of my personnel records and my itemized wage statements. Under Labor Code section 432, I also request a copy of every document I signed relating to my employment. I will pay reasonable copying costs; please provide the records within the statutory deadlines.
2 · The pay scale for your position
Deadline: on reasonable request. Right: current employees (and applicants, for posted roles).
Under Labor Code section 432.3, I request the pay scale for my current position.
One sentence; it converts a suspicion into data, as our equal-pay primer explains.
3 · Your quota and your own work-speed data
Deadline: 21 days. Right: covered warehouse employees.
Under the warehouse-quota provisions of the Labor Code (sections 2100–2112), I request a written description of each quota to which I am subject, and a copy of my personal work-speed data for the most recent 90 days.
Adverse action within 90 days of this request is presumed retaliatory — the request itself builds protection.
4 · Your sick-leave balance
Right: on every wage statement or accompanying document, automatically.
No letter needed — check the stub. If the balance appears nowhere, that absence is a violation worth noting by date, per the annotated-stub piece.
5 · Your background-check report
Right: a copy of any report, and pre-adverse-action notice with the report, before a rejection based on it.
I request a complete copy of any consumer report or investigative consumer report obtained about me in connection with my application or employment, as provided under the Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Then read it against the actual court records, as the Fair Chance primer describes.
The pattern worth noticing. Each of these rights exists because the Legislature decided information asymmetry was itself the harm: employers hold the records, workers hold the consequences. The letters rebalance that in an afternoon. Send what applies, calendar the deadlines — and if what comes back (or doesn’t) tells a story, bring the whole correspondence to us. Dated silence is one of our favorite exhibits.
This page states California and federal law as of its revision date. Templates are provided for individual use; they are information, not legal advice.
This article states California law as of its revision date and is analysis, not legal advice. Reading this site does not create an attorney-client relationship. Attorney advertising.