Employment actions for penalties pursuant to the Private Attorneys General Act of 2004 (PAGA) have exploded in recent years. PAGA, which allows individual employees to step in the shoes of the California Labor Commissioner and recover civil penalties on behalf of themselves and other so-called "aggrieved employees," is popular among the plaintiffs' bar because (in addition to providing for attorneys' fees) the PAGA statute does not require certification. For years, this has allowed the plaintiffs' bar to use PAGA as a procedural vehicle to represent huge and disparate groups of employees without considering whether their claims could be proved using common proof.