KNOW YOUR RIGHT - OVERTIME LAW AND ITS EXEMPTIONS

Overtime is basically when an employee has to work additional hours than the designated hours of the work. The employers are required to pay for overtime worked by their employees. As per the United States Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the employers violating the overtime law can face overtime lawsuit for unpaid wages. 

• OVERTIME LAWS:

The overtime law states that the employees are to be paid at least the minimum wage for standard hours worked and overtime pay for the extra hours worked. The overtime pay hhs to be one and half times the regular rate of the salary. The standard salary also includes the bonuses and additional benefits and according to that, normal salary is calculated. 

• MINIMIZED LABOR LAWS:
  Sometimes, the employers purposely do not pay the workers to reduce the labor cost. This is considered illegal and it builds grounds for the lawsuit which the employee can pursue if they have been not given:

• minimum wages,
• refusal of overtime wages,
• wrongfully mislead the employee to believe they do not deserve the overtime pay,
• docked the hours worked by the employee to avoid paying them overtime pay.

If the employer violate the overtime laws, then a worker can take legal consultant for deciding the steps he can take for getting the deserving pay. If all the employees in an organization are not getting the overtime pay, then a class-action lawsuit can be filed against the employer for the unfair treatment.

• EXEMPTIONS:
  The exemptions for overtime laws include the workers that fall under the executive and administrative category. There are two aspects that are considered for an employee to get an exemption from overtime law:

Salary Exemption:

• First one is the salary basis in which the employee is paid salary on the basis of the weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis and it is fixed with no deductions because of any reason including the quantity and quality of work.

• The full time employees earning under $47,476 annually will be considered eligible for the overtime pay.

Job Description:

• The second basis for the overtime law exemption is the type of job description an employee has.

• The administrative and executive exemptions are the most common exemptions in the overtime law. The others are more complicated to calculate.

• The executive exemption is given to the employees who have management positions in the business, where they have responsibility of hiring or firing the employees and offer valuable recommendations to the department.

• The type of work performed by the employee regardless of the job description decided whether or not you are an exempt employee. It differs from case to case.

The money that is considered as back pay according to the FLSA is the difference in the money you were to be paid for the overtime hours worked and the wages you were paid. If you file the lawsuit and are successfully able to win the case, then you are entitled to the double the amount of back-pay that you were originally supposed to be paid along with the attorney fees.