Is This Wage Theft?

Location: California

I am an entry level employee who graduated in 2024. For the past year, I was employed as a Full-Time, non-exempt Associate at a CA consulting firm. Despite my Full Time contract, I was only paid for billable hours, averaging 25/week, while being required to remain "on-call" for 40. Requests for more hours or paid training were denied or ignored.

On 2 separate instances in August & Oct, I challenged my supervisor on the ethics of controlling my time ( expecting me to be on call) without pay (citing potential wage theft). In response, she blamed my performance, despite never giving me a 90-day review, stating " my team didn't know my skills and thus didn't give me work". After hearing this I emailed each of my team members and facilitated individual meetings with them to which they did not echo her claims. It was clear my supervisor did not know much about my work or my perfomance. During this meeting I collected professional feedback about how to improve my skills. Essentially , I facilated my own 90 day review.

After this my supervisor spoke to HR and said that was wrong my hours were controlled and pressured me to voluntarily transition to Part-Time status, which I refused because my contract said full time.

I was let go in Jan because the firm said that they "lacked work" for me. I signed a severnce agreement but I feel dirty doing it but I have no choice because I need the money. Public reviews and reviews from past associates show a pattern of this firm hiring associates and keeping them at low hours to maintain a cheap, on-call "bench"..I want to file for wage theft but want to know if I can.