Are you getting the overtime pay you're entitled to?

By Steven J. Kherkher

According to United States federal law, employees who work more than 40 hours per week are generally entitled to overtime pay, at "time and a half" or 1.5 times their regular hourly rate for each hour of overtime.

Even if an employee is salaried and paid weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, he or she is generally still entitled to overtime pay – although this may depend on state regulations, which sometimes override federal law.

To be ineligible for overtime, an employee must be classified as "exempt." Normally, only carefully-defined executive, administrative and professional positions are exempt. The rules governing this classification are complex, and companies take advantage of this confusion to misclassify their employees and avoid paying them overtime.

Generally speaking, employees must earn a specific amount of weekly pay and spend most of their time on management, business operations, or highly-skilled professional job duties in order to be classified as exempt; their official job title means nothing. Please contact us if you have any questions about your classification.

Are you working "off the clock" and not getting paid for it?

Companies are not allowed to require employees to work "off the clock" or tell them that they can "only record 40 hours" in order to avoid paying them overtime. Employees must be permitted to record all hours worked, and all hours over 40 in a workweek must be compensated at "time and a half."

As an example, if a manager requires you to complete a task before leaving work, but complains that it is taking too long and tells you to clock out while finishing the task, he is violating employment law.

Often, companies try to justify telling employees to work "off the clock" by claiming that they are "exempt" or that they are "salaried" or "commissioned" employees. However, there is no justification for asking an employee to work "off the clock."

If you believe your employer may have wrongfully withheld wages from you, contact us for a free consultation.