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Anyone know his way around federal labor laws?

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I billed just over 89 hours across an 11-day pay period, but didn't get 1.5x my hourly rate for that last hour. I asked my manager and was told the company doesn't pay 1.5x overtime, so I decided to do some research. Apparently there are exemptions to the Fair Labor Standards Act, which I might fall under. However, a lot of the wording seems nebulous at best and the Department of Labor's site kinda sucks.

Does anyone have experience with this sort of thing? I don't want to quibble over a handful of bucks, but our business ramps up in the fall season; last year, I was routinely working 50+ hour weeks. (This wasn't an issue last year because I was brought in by a staffing agency which paid out overtime, but I have since been hired on permanently.)

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I took a brief FLSA seminar about a year ago. The main stuff is this:

 

  • If you're exempt, FLSA doesn't apply to you. This is basically a "salary" employee, where you get paid the same amount every pay period no matter what. This is defined by the employer and you basically have to agree to being exempt. It's common for management and IT to be exempt. Also, if you're doing contracted work the rules are different.
  • The 1.5x hourly rate applies to every hour over 40 in a standard work week. A work week is defined by 7 consecutive 24-hour days, no necessarily bound by a calendar week. This is defined by whatever the history is - your employer can't change the work week to split time between two periods for their convenience. In the case of an audit, a labor officer would look at previous workweek as defined on your paychecks.
  • Regardless of the pay scale, FLSA applies to non-exempt employees.
  • What does that mean? Well, if you're paid based on non-time based measures such as commission or piece-rate (like if you're in housekeeping, being paid on a per-room-serviced basis), FLSA means that your wage is still calculated by the amount you're paid during the workweek period. So, you can't be doing a disproportionate amount of work for pay, basically. Overtime would then be calculated from whatever wage was determined by the amount of work performed in that period per the time spent.

Without knowing more about your specfic situation, it's hard to answer your question. Also, the DOL is wildly understaffed (something like 2 or 3 officers per state on average) so labor disputes on an individual basis are usually put on the backburner. If you're one of many employees that have an overtime issue, it'd be much easier for the DOL to get involved because their mission is to serve as many people as possible in each case.

 

Edit: Wow yeah, the DOL's site is pretty bad. I did manage to find this handy fact sheet that I received in the seminar last year, might be helpful for you - http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/wh1282.pdf

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I'm not salaried, but it looks like I might fall under an exemption. I do design and retouching for a photography company. At the moment, I'm only averaging something like 80.5 hours per work week, though as I stated, I expect to work more hours in the fall. If the owner doesn't have to pay me, well that sucks, but I can live with that. But I want to be sure she's got legal precedent to do so.

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It sounds like you'd fall under the creative professional employee exemption (from DOL Fact Sheet #17A)

All of the following tests must be met:

• The employee must be compensated on a salary or fee basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $455 per week;

• The employee’s primary duty must be the performance of work requiring invention, imagination, originality or talent in a recognized field of artistic or creative endeavor.

Exempt sucks. Everyone should just be paid hourly for the amount of work they do.

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That wage line is constant across all provisions, so it sounds like you have a beef.

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I don't have anything useful to say, but the phrasing of the topic could be interpreted to mean you are looking for a way around labor laws, a way to circumvent them. Which I found amusing.

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i know my way around federal labor laws. the best way around federal labor laws is to only pay your employees in cash and threaten them if they grumble. works every time.

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"We used to build things in this country, damn it."

 

Anyway, they are definitely misinterpreting the law here and I'm certain I've got a legitimate grievance. What's the best way to approach this situation? I do not want to lose this job, but I have a feeling that an indelicate touch will make me the office pariah. I don't believe any staff is salaried, so this is potentially a company-wide issue.

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Texas is a right-to-work state, which—long story short—means that if you have to work for a living, you're a slave. Good luck standing up to your owners!

 

There is no way to poke an owner in the eye and them not to a, take it personally, and b, take revenge.

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They can't treat you differently for raising a complaint, which just means they'll find some other reason to fire you if they really want. Not like you'd have the money to contest the issue in a real court. I would ask nicely in a "I'm curous how things work here" sort of tone why you aren't getting time and a half for something. It's always possible it's an accounting mistake. If you get the stone wall there, then it's up to you how much you value the job versus how much you value fair treatment.

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Every time I see this thread title, I parse it as someone looking for advice on circumventing federal labor laws.

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Exempt sucks. Everyone should just be paid hourly for the amount of work they do.

 

I enjoyed working for salary because I meant I didn't have to do timesheets, and I didn't have to justify whether the amount of hours I worked were worth paying for.

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They can't treat you differently for raising a complaint, which just means they'll find some other reason to fire you if they really want. Not like you'd have the money to contest the issue in a real court. I would ask nicely in a "I'm curous how things work here" sort of tone why you aren't getting time and a half for something. It's always possible it's an accounting mistake. If you get the stone wall there, then it's up to you how much you value the job versus how much you value fair treatment.

They could try to spin it to the unemployment offices like my previous job did where me making a complaint meant I had a negative attitude and therefore was misconduct.

 

However in Texas, the shitty right to work state, even this did not fly with the hearing officer.

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