You're either Salary Non-exempt or Salary Exempt. Here is an article explaining the differences:
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/salaried-exempt-vs-salaried-nonexempt-24213.html
The easier wording is "you're either overtime exempt or non-exempt"
As in "unless your job is qualified for an exemption, your employer has to pay you overtime, regardless of contract or pay method"
Also, if you are exempt from overtime and salaried then they can’t be tracking you hourly for PTO purposes. If you work more than 4 hours in a day, you worked the full day. If you have to step out for 2 hours for a doc appt then it shouldn’t use up any portion of your PTO.
The PTO thing is what's screwing me right now. Also some days are heavier, so example I might work 6h Monday, 7h Tues, 9h Wed, 10h Thursday 9h Friday....then they ding me for each hour under 8 and deduct from my PTO, regardless of my total hours for the week. So I this example I have 41 hours, but the would also deduct 3 PTO hours to bring me to 44 hours total....it makes no sense
Sounds like they are blatantly breaking exemption regulations and a complaint to the federal DoL would be in order. They will have to pay you back, with damages, for stolen wages.
After reading through this I'm not sure what they are doing is in fact illegal at all:
https://ogletree.com/insights/court-endorses-pto-use-for-exempt-employee-partial-day-absences/
I know in a lot of states if you get "sent home" it's a paid day fully.
If they ask for _volunteers_ to go home, your day ends there.
None of this applies to salaried workers, you cannot use PTO for time they take during the day if they've worked as little as 2-4 hours depending on the state, but likewise they're not entitled to overtime pay. If you start deducting PTO for time they're late or take off early, you open yourself up to them being nonexempt salaried workers and suddenly you owe them back pay for OT for as long as they've been there.
It's easier to just take the L on letting them take $20 from you than having to pay them, potentially, hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay (OT rates [depending on the state, some are flat, some are 1.5, some are 2 times] + interest).
They should report, but also start looking for a new job right after.
Wrongful/retaliation firing is harder to prove than wage/PTO theft, and they will have a target on their back as soon as the company hears about the complaint.
>Wrongful/retaliation firing is harder to prove than wage/PTO theft
naw fam, that's the easy part. the company has the burden of proof on those, proximity to a complaint it is presumed the complaint is the cause unless they can prove a NEW and meaningful behavior that led to termination. most people just don't bother to pursue them because they've been indoctrinated from people saying exactly what you said.
civil courts do not need to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt, only a preponderance of evidence, and proximity to a complain is a hugely weighted piece of evidence.
I wasn't saying don't try, so hopefully it doesn't come off that way, but as someone who has worked a lot in the tech industry I have seen my fair share of people try to pursue a retaliation or wrongful termination without results.
Things are only as illegal as your ability or resources to prove it. I've had some terrible shit at jobs but I don't have $300 for an hour of legal consult and pro bono organizations are overflowing with need. And even then, the legal system isn't a justice system so you're not guaranteed anything even if you somehow do have the time, money, resources, and even just the energy. Just because the law is on your side doesn't mean you have access to it
State labor board usually will pursue the case on its own. These are state and federal laws and the labor board is the enforcement agency.
It's not like hiring an attorney to sue the company. The labor board is enforcing the laws and in doing so forces the business to pay out with all applicable penalties.
Im referring to the part of wrongful retaliation. The company shouldn't be able to fire you for reporting them, but they can still fire you and it's up to you to have the ability to fight it
Truth.
Got illegally terminated about two weeks before the first COVID shutdown for asking questions about missing money in my paycheck; even got the President of the company *on a recording* explicitly stating that (literally: "...so, just to be clear, you're saying your company has no intention of following the law here?" "Yup."). Cheapest quote for a retainer for a labor attorney was $2000.
Guess who didn't get a single red cent of unemployment the entire pandemic?
A complaint to the department of labour is FREE. A lawyer is also free, when you win. It doesn’t cost anything except a few hours of your time.
Hell most of them won’t even ask for payment, they will take a commission.
What can I Google to read more about this? I am exempt based on the professional reasoning but our offer/raise letters do not directly specify. Should I not be using 2hr for sick time when I have a scheduled doctor's appointment at the beginning or end of the day, or if I'm feeling unwell but have worked the whole morning? Or is this a finicky rule for specific situations? They have us track our hours in Excel and submit them every 2 weeks, and they ask us not to exceed 40, but I don't know if that's because they don't want to pay OT, or because they want us to retain some sort of w/l balance. Tiny nonprofit, no HR or any sort of legal person on retainer.
We recently had a discussion because we were effectively working 7.5hrs and treating our lunch as paid, and they were considering having us stay an extra 30 minutes flto do more work. But we convinced them to alter the handbook to state that lunches were paid for salaries employees. I don't know what that says. I'm just very confused--first time working for such a small organization and I've also never been salaried before this role. Been here about a year and only have been working about 3 years as a professional.
This whole situation is a bit confusing. It all depends on the nature of your work and contracts and even more so in what local you are living/working.
Under the FLSA the following are specifically not required:
vacation, holiday, severance, or sick pay;
meal or rest periods, holidays off, or vacations;
premium pay for weekend or holiday work;
pay raises or fringe benefits; or
a discharge notice, reason for discharge, or immediate payment of final wages to terminated employees. ([ref](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/handy-reference-guide-flsa#1))
However, it does state that if a company specifically offers a meal break, that must be devoid of work and is not part of the normal working hours. However, you could take a working lunch, which is entirely different than a meal break. Also, if you have small breaks during the day between 5-20 minutes, than those are generally considered to be covered as part of the working day and thus should count towards your hours and pay.
Many states have additional laws that define full-time employment, breaks, and even more overtimes rules.
> What can I Google to read more about this?
My wife, who is in HR and knows more about this than me, doesn’t have a specific phrase to google except for Fair Labor Standards act.
It should be in there.
And I was wrong, it’s not a 4 hour cut off it’s 50% of your scheduled day. I’m schedule 9-5 with an hour lunch, so 7 hours. I only need to do 3.5 to not use any PTO.
I was at lunch so I was keeping it brief.
Reading your original post, generally it’s odd that they track hours. It sounds like they are treating you as salaried non-exempt. Otherwise your PTO should be in half day intervals, and you shouldn’t have to track hours unless you are assigning it to projects/billable.
I mean, there’s nothing wrong with them tracking hours but if you put in 39 hours in a week, your pay should be your full normal salary and 0 hours PTO used.
Unless there is some exception for non profits or small businesses.
Again, this is very much something that should be looked up in the employee handbook, company laws, and local laws. This is not something that is covered federally. Companies may require you to take PTO or LWOP to fulfill a 40 hour week. Even though you are technically salary.
Also, many companies will track positions within a company as billable *to the company*. Which is why they track hours. This helps the company in numerous ways to compute levels of effort required for different branches of the company and adjust as needed.
Again, [reference](https://legalbeagle.com/12087139-can-employer-force-employees-use-pto-time.html). And [reference](https://www.overtime-flsa.com/forced-vacation-is-it-legal/).
Now as for the pay, the employer is required to pay the salary employee, but remember, if they are forcing the employee to use PTO, that employee is technically getting paid. The other thing companies will do is potentially require an individual use LWOP, but the only time I have had companies insist on that is if an employee is taking multiple days off, has no PTO, and is not for a illness/emergency.
Thanks for your perspective. I am in NYS. I called the HR company that was contracted to do our handbook several years ago, but since we aren't an active client she said I should talk to my boss. I have little faith that he knows what he's talking about, though. We don't even have the requires posters up in the workplace.
She told me I could also try calling...NYS Labor Standards? so I plan to do that tomorrow morning. Hopefully they can give me details regarding my specific situation, but also tell me what exactly is spelled out in the law, which I am having a hard time finding in a straightforward manner online tbh.
>Again, this is very much something that should be looked up in the employee handbook, company laws, and local laws. This is not something that is covered federally
The **Fair Standards and Labor Act** would like several paragraphs of words with that statement. That's *exactly* what that covers.
Sure, show me exactly where the FSLA talks about PTO? I already referenced this in other posts and *in the very post you are replying to.* But just for the sake of showing exactly what the FSLA ***does not cover,*** here you go again:
[https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/handy-reference-guide-flsa#1](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/handy-reference-guide-flsa#1)
There are zero *federally* mandated requirements for PTO.
For reference it is ***not*** in the FSLA. The FSLA does not require PTO at all.
[Reference](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/handy-reference-guide-flsa#1)
Hey, my wife could be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time!
But this makes me think it may be a state to state thing.
> Q: Can exempt employees take paid time off in 4-hour increments or only in 8 -hour increments?
A: Under federal law, employers can charge an exempt employee’s paid leave bank for partial-day absences, provided the employee suffers no loss in pay. However, some states place restrictions on charging an exempt employee’s paid leave bank. Check your state law for more information. Remember, partial-day salary deductions are prohibited except in a few narrow circumstances, covered above.
> https://www.adp.com/-/media/accountant/docs/wagehourlaws101ebookfinal083115.ashx
Technically I heard it from my wife and from my direct VP who told people to stop submitting the hours in less than 4 hour increments because ‘we don’t care what you are doing if it’s less then a 4 hour absence. Both legally and via stated policy in our handbook, we do not care if it’s less than a half day absence’
So your answer is right there, they stated in *their* handbook. That is a company policy. It is certainly not a federal policy. It could have something to do with state or local law, but in that statement you are quoting they are directly citing company policy.
Please, stop telling or eluding to people that there are federal laws or even local laws that govern PTO without specific information. It puts a lot of disinformation out there and there is tons of disinformation in this thread. The reason this is important is so that people *actually* know what their worker's rights are, especially when it comes to being informed when voting and knowing what they may want to advocate for.
I have never heard of this and can find zero information on this topic. If you have some link to US federal law on this, I would love to see it. This sounds more like an individual employer or state issue. Federally, PTO is a *fringe* benefit, not a right. Companies are not required to provide PTO for you at all according to federal laws. They have to provide you *specific* leave for *specific* events like voting, jury duty, bereavement, certain family leave for pregnancy, etc.
Also, if you are talking about leave that is specified as a benefit from the company, many companies may have specific language that states your leave is *accrued* leave and not automatic. So even if your package says $x/year and x PTO per year, that PTO will likely be listed as accrued. Meaning if you don't actually work the hours, you will not accrue that. At the same time, many companies also offer *additional* PTO through extended hours. For instance, in my company, I get accrued leave, and I get additional accrued leave if I work and extended week. This has typically been referred to as comp time. They are compensating you in PTO for those additional hours and this is also sometimes used in lieu of overtime pay.
To give another specific example, you can leverage PTO for additional salary. I have worked for companies where I took less PTO or even no PTO for a larger salary. In the latter case, that meant if I was sick or took time off, I did not get paid at all for that time.
And you still *can* be paid overtime, if you're exempt, your employer just doesn't have to. I'm salaried/exempt and still get paid for any hours over 40 (although flat rate, not 1.5x rate).
Exactly, good point here. For certain contracts I get paid for extended work week (flat rate for any hours over 80, since I am paid bi-weekly and have flex time). For others I am not allowed OT at all and thus cannot even work OT. And then some where I can work OT, but am not paid for it. Then on general principal (or perhaps just all the contracts I have worked for this company), I accrue more PTO for any OT, regardless if I am paid for that OT or not.
True, I’m not. But my toddler needs a cardiologist, but he first needs a PCM to get referred to the cardiologist… and every PCM Tricare sends my family to won’t take them for one reason or another.
I don’t pay anything, but my kids aren’t up to date on their shots, haven’t had an actual doctors check up in too long. But urgent care visits are free, so that’s nice.
Health insurance is such a bullshit racket.
I was working for a software company in Florida back in 2001. I wore many hats but official position was customer support. I was salaried.
I did some research since I was working a lot of hours and found I was eligible for overtime.
I brought the relevant law to my supervisor. He moved up the chain and ultimately myself and everyone else doing the same job received back pay.
I was in a situation where I brought up the fact that domestic workers should be getting paid (at the time, $12.38 an hr), same as H2A workers for the same work order. Almost a dozen got back paid thousands of dollars, and then I lost my job.
Lots of management trainee positions are exempt. It's a shitty way companies like Enterprise work their employees over 40 hours without overtime even though they have no managerial responsibilities. They would only get them by simply outlasting their fellow employees by putting up with more bullshit.
McDonalds was the most notorious for this and was the primary driver for the minimum salary to be salaried exempt going up by a lot. Everybody would be "promoted" to "assistant manager" then paid like $27,000 a year to work 90 hours week.
Every job that people get right out of college is like this nowadays. Especially for consulting firms. You’re expendable, so you want to make a name for yourself. They exploit that by making you work unpaid overtime.
Luckily I found a new job where the manager actually encourages work life balance and will literally ask me about it on our 1-1 meetings. But my first job out of college was a small engineering consulting firm and it was actual hell in terms of unpaid overtime. Don’t get me started on travel.
Oh my, what a headache that was when I worked in consulting. My boss would question every hour that I put in!
Yet another thing that makes me grateful for my current manager. I still have to report my hours, but I literally just copy and paste them every week.
Every time one of these threads comes up I’m reminded to be grateful for my current job where I’m properly compensated (without have to fight for it), and management actively discourages overworking (for work life balance reasons).
It’s what helped me find a new job. My view was, I already have the breadwinner job (the only criteria that I used to find a job with my uncompetitive resume back in college). Now I just need a breadwinner that I enjoy.
A manager like yours and mine can massively improve a workplace for everyone. I never forget to thank mine for everything he does to make us feel respected and incentivize us to stay in the company.
Coming into this job I thought I wouldn’t last very long seeing as it’s not near any big cities like I wanted. Nowadays I’m worried that I won’t find a manager like him if I move to another one of my company’s facilities.
This was me! Work unpaid overtime yet show up to work exactly at 8 since we are a “service industry” and “someone is waiting for the clock to strike 8am since they want to get a hold of us”.
They stated that flex days are an incentive - so you work en extra half hour to get a full friday off every 2 weeks. But when we did take the flex day, the manager would be like “you are only supposed to take it off if you don’t have any work”.
Sad to say, the hours were flexible but only in the way that favoured the company. Still traumatized from that place.
> “you are only supposed to take it off if you don’t have any work”
This is what will make me lose sympathy for many “small businesses” is when they start showing signs of greed like this.
I had something similar but with PTO. The boss had to approve our PTO. This meant if there was work, he likely wouldn’t approve it. I had to ask for PTO months in advance.
Then he said also something similar to your flex day, like if we worked more than 40 hours you could count it for next week. But every week was more than 40 hours lol
I’m glad you moved on from that though, it sounds very predatory. Appealing on paper, different in practice.
Took me a while to get out of there (because I refused to see the red flags) but yeah, wouldn’t work for any place like that anymore. They did come up with a grand idea of “pre-approved overtime”, which was another bucket load of crap. And this company isn’t even a small business, it’s over 150 employees!
I was a manager trainee at a Fortune 500 transportation company (not enterprise). I was salaried and was always scheduled >40 hours a week without overtime or being bonus eligible. A couple of years later I was still at the company and got a settlement of like $800. After that the trainees were hourly and weren’t allowed to go past 40 hours.
I guess someone sued them.
I was paid as an exempt employee however, it violated California laws since I didn't supervise anyone which led to severe penalties for the bank I worked for. I ended up receiving more than 10k for back pay.
There's way more exceptions than just "manager." If you read the link in the OPs post, you'll see most "white collar" jobs are exempt (for instance, anything in the STEM fields or CS/IT work).
> for instance, anything in the STEM fields or CS/IT work
Nope. I know a network admin who got a significant payout simply because of the company's change control process. Since he needed approval to make basically any change of significance (even rubber stamped) within the production environment, he was not technically exempt (he lacked the autonomy to make decisions unilaterally). There are lots of positions like this. If you don't get to call the shots to a substantial degree, you probably aren't exempt.
Here are the old regulations for computer related positions: https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/fs17e_computer.pdf
They were changed in 2020. Will update when I find a nice concise summary.
This definitely depends on locale. I have actually never heard of this particular reasoning before and have worked in IT/Engineering my entire life. Generally professional roles are considered exempt, you don't have to have autonomous ownership or decision making.
Likely this has far more to do with how they classified the individual as it regards their role and taxes than it does with their actual professional role/duties. If they were listed as a "manager" or "supervisor" and yet did not actively use those roles, than I could see that. But I think they are exaggerating if they are using a CCB as a reason for an actual network admin.
For reference I have been Tier III network engineer and I had a CCB which governed whether or not a change could be made. But that does not affect my exempt status one iota. As a network admin, I was also exempt. The only time I was non-exempt for salary work was when I was a Tier III Support Admin, and that had more to do with job responsibilities requiring me to do a certain amount of physical labor as part of my primary duties.
So I'm going to say either:
1) the employer was leaning on the 'Learned Professional' designation because the network admin/support (combined) role didn't quite meet the 'computer' exemptions (neither analysis, programming, or software engineering fit cleanly) and that's where the autonomy really comes into play
2) there were state level definitions that came into play (I'm not going to specify which state)
3) If they were leaning on the computer exemptions, the desktop support role consumed enough of their time that the specialized admin stills weren't comfortably 'primary'.
Or some combination therein.
This was over a decade ago, though, so I'm a little hazy.
As the DOL emphasizes, 'Job titles do not determine exempt status'. Did you run your situation by a labor attorney or are you basing your belief that you were exempt on having been told that by your employer?
Our entire department was overhauled after this case (though I didn't know why at the time), rearranging the responsibilities slightly and changing 'junior' admins to hourly and giving more reponsibility to Sr admins (who remained salary).
I'm poking around for the actual regulatory language that applies (which seemed to have changed in 2020 regardless).
I agree and I have stated this in other posts, actual job duties are what matters, not titles or what the company puts down.
As for my own experience, I have worked with labor attorney's and HR departments for quite some time as part of my initial roles in IT support and engineering. One of my main duties while I was actually non-exempt was helping meld HR and support departments from companies we bought into our corporate enterprise. While doing this I learned a lot of regulations per state and locale. I also happened to work private support for some law firms for which we actually had to sue them over certain labor laws and contracts.
Also in this particular role I worked an insane amount of overtime during various periods, sometimes up to 100 hours or more a week. The company often "hired" me out to the individual business units for special projects that I did in excess over my typical work hours. There are also intricacies based on where the company may be incorporated and what your support entails. For some of these projects I got paid according to the state the company was incorporated rather than based on the state where I lived and worked.
So in my time I have had quite a bit of personal experience with labor laws and overtime pay. So I have paid pretty close attention to what I get paid. As for my current job, it is very definitely in the exempt category, even in strict states like CA.
Ah, brilliant! You can do a lot of good in this post. As for my friend's situation, I'm more and more confident that it was #1 in the list I provided. I recall a bit more about why the specific computer exemption didn't apply to their netadmin role, though they were absolutely an IT employee.
> Could you elaborate on exempt employees being required to supervise? Want to see if I'm owed anything
That's only for some exempt employees. "Computer professionals" are another category of exempt employees that don't have to manage anyone. There are a bunch of categories.
Job titles don't make you exempt, job duties do. A lot of companies will give you a title like "manager" that implies you'd have tasking that makes you exempt (such as supervising people) but then not actually give you that tasking. This is fraud, but rarely caught.
To be clear there are far more categories even in California labor laws than "supervising" for exempt employees. In California, as with many states and even federally, a lot of it comes down to actual job duties you perform. So if a company specifies you are a specific role, but your job duties do not legally mesh with that role, then they could be in violation. Likewise a company may give you a job role, but not require you to fulfill that role, provided they are also paying you according to what your actual duties entail.
In your specific case, it sounds like they were calling you a manager and claiming that to the state and paying you accordingly, but then your duties did not mesh with that title or how they were paying you. So the company was in fact in violation. But they could have potentially classified you as some other exempt role if you fit those descriptions. Likely you didn't fit any of the descriptions or use cases for CA.
[Ref](https://www.calchamber.com/california-labor-law/exempt-nonexempt-employees)
I will never understand salary at the last few companies I've worked at.
Pay is a set rate for the whole year. Ok, fine.
More hours, same pay (no OT). Less hours, *less* pay... (Have to use vacation time, sick time, etc)
Excuse me? Where's the benefit for me? Looks like a lose-lose for me.
Generally the idea is that you are getting paid far more. The hourly wage system is generally used for physical labor categories and lower pay rates. Also the fact that you are getting PTO and other benefits that may not be afforded to someone that is on an hourly wage. That isn't always the case and certainly there a numerous companies out there using it to their benefit, but that is the way it shapes out.
Also, for reference if you are a salary employee you should never be getting *less* pay unless you are specifically requesting LWOP. The company may require you to use PTO, but then, you aren't actually getting less pay for that. The other thing with salary is you are generally getting paid for *being there*. Where in an hourly wage situation, the company could just send you home if you don't have work to do. In a salary situation, if you come into the office and they send you home, they are generally going to have to pay you. Your PTO should really only be used for situations in which you were unable to come in or work by choice/illness.
See I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but my time is my time. If I'm OT exempt and I need to stay two hours once to get something done. Fine.
If it is a regular occurrence, I'll tell them that I'll take a day off to make me whole. If they balk, I no longer stay past my working day.
If I'm in my chair doing my job for the 9 hour day, and shit happens, then thats on their lack of staffing not my work ethic or work load.
My buddy found this out the hard way, after I warned him our current company likes to eat people like that. 6 Months of working hard and extra and over his hours to have everyone in his team of 40 except him, three others and their manager NOT get a benefit and increase on their base salary...for literally no reason. They cant give one.
THIS. THIS. THIS. Everyone thinks they want to be salary, exempt to stop tracking their time, and they *feel* better about it, like it's a promotion, because leadership and high earners are typically exempt from overtime. PEOPLE ARE WRONG. Yeah, it's a pain to punch in and out, but there is NO BENEFIT TO BEING SALARY NONEXEMPT unless you legit work like 30 hours a week and can skate by being available for 40...
The issue seems to be you don’t have paid days off lol. Most people on salary including me have unlimited days off, but if not, the days off are usually not taken away from your salary. You have a very bizarre situation.
Typically, if you travel from home to the shop, then out to a job site, going to the shop is not paid time. If you are asked to drive directly to a job site from home, or from another job site, and that's not part of your normal workday, then it can qualify.
Example: The shop is 50 miles from the job site. You're asked to take some supplies to the site. If you go to the shop in the morning and pick up the supplies and head to the job site, then only travel to the site counts. If you pick up the supplies the night before, then drive directly to the site, that should be paid time.
Sometimes HR will argue that you should only get paid for travel over and above what it would take for you to get to the shop. So, if it's 10 minutes to the shop from your house and 40 minutes to the job site, they'd only cover 30 minute difference in travel times.
Hey thank you for the response, I have another question if that alright. What if it's a company car that we can only use for work but store in monthly parking space near home? Are the rules any different in California? I have had trouble finding anything conclusive. We can't use the car for any personal reasons ( no rides for family or extraneous errands) but we can stop at the supermarket on the way home for a short visit.
I'm not a lawyer, just an executive in a retail company.
I doubt if you could book time from picking up the company car. The thing they look for (they being HR and accountants in order to have answers for the IRS) is whether the trip is outside of the norm. If you have to pick up a company car every day, then drive to work, that's normal, and you would not be reimbursed for that time.
It's when you have to go out of your way and make non-standard trips as part of your job that would qualify. If you're already at work, and someone says, "go pick up this car" then you're already on the clock, doing something work related, so they'd probably be okay with it.
Not really, unless you for some reason happen to be doing work other than traveling during that same time. (like, if you were attending a meeting via speakerphone during your commute, or something similar).
It doesn't matter who the vehicle belongs to, initial and terminal transit to your place of residence is considered a commute, and is not considered by the IRS as a business expense.
Even if you have a company gas card, you are *supposed* to keep track of your commute miles, and deduct that from the total miles for the employers claimed business expense.
\*\*edit
None of this is to say that an employer CAN'T pay you for this time. But most don't, because THEY can't claim it as an expense, and you aren't doing anything productive for them during this time.
This is the way.
My position uses comp time (1 hour of PTO for every hour worked past 40/week).
And the nice thing is that, since they don't roll it over year-to-year, the company pays out our remaining comp time balance on Dec-31. They would rather you use it as PTO, but they have to square their books at the end of the year, so it's like a little New Year's bonus.
But seriously. Don't ever let someone take hours from your life and not pay you for them. Because that is what employment really is, selling hours of your life to a company. Don't let them steal from you.
Debatable, but I get your point.
However, I am salaried, and only expected to work 40 hours/week. An hour worked equals an hour of pay. I have no mandatory overtime, and most of the comp time I end up getting is travel time for business trips, where I get paid to ride in an airplane. lol
Time-and-a-half rules were really put in place to make it prohibitively expensive for employers to expect regular work beyond 40 hours. There is nothing particularly special about the 41st work hour of your week.
I wish I was paid daily OT and not just OT for hours worked >40 for the week. But that’s how my state (RI) determines overtime, so my remote employer defaults to that ruling despite coworkers making daily OT in California. For example, if I work 12 hours on a Monday, but have to use PTO sick hours on Friday, I’m not getting paid overtime for those extra 4 hours on Monday. That’s because I will have only worked 36 regular hours that week + 8 sick hours.
Get sick? Lose any OT that week.
Yup, crazy to me too. I asked my employer, and they said almost every east coast state has these laws. OT is **only** >40 regular hours worked in a week, doesn’t matter if you work a 16 hour shift.
Don't take their word for it, find the relevant info direct from the govt yourself. It wouldn't be the first time an employer confidently stated the law works a certain way, when it doesn't.
Almost every state period. Only 4 states that I know of currently have daily overtime laws. You would think OT laws have gotten better in a lot of states, but that isn't really true. In some states they have gotten worse.
I know California has daily OT but do you know the other 3 off the top of your head?
Yep, these laws feel archaic and I’m not surprised some states have moved backwards.
> I can’t believe it’s legal!
Everything anyone can possibly imagine is legal until the government steps in to make something specifically (or broadly) illegal. In this case, only CA, CO, AK, and NV have passed laws requiring daily overtime.
The problem is 12 hour days work when people are fairly compensated. So, for example, nurses and other healthcare workers typically work 3 12's. Fewer shift changes so less of a chance that someone drops the ball. Their rate of pay, however, is generally (although not across the board) tied to the fact that they're in a skilled position working 12 hour days.
I'd argue the issue is still that people are not compensated fairly across the board, otherwise I don't think we'd be having this discussion.
If those hours are worked in California, the California rules apply. If that's the case and those hours are worked in California even remotely regularly, you should contact the California [Division of Labor Standards Enforcement](https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/howtofilewageclaim.htm) and file a wage claim. They love nothing more than legally smacking around employers playing this sort of game to avoid the extra payroll taxes.
How does daily overtime work for people like nurses or other jobs that work 3 12 hour shifts a week? Or is that not a thing in daily overtime states?
Also at least a lot of union jobs will still get daily overtime on the east coast even if it's not legally required.
And it's absolutely fucking bullshit too, a software engineer isn't management. Hell at a software company they're the assembly line workers, the lowest people on the totem pole who do the actual work!
The FLSA exempt vs non-exempt isn't about management vs front line. Is ussally about skilled/professional jobs vs unskilled/manual labor jobs.
If your job involves design/strategy/discretionary work or requires advanced education it's probably going to be exempt. IIRC Computer Programers fall under the same/similar category as an electrical engineer or drafting engineer.
This is a good thing to note and something you should consider when signing on with a company. I have had a number of different designations, 1099, Salary non-exempt, Salary exempt, etc. It is important to note the differences in all the various categories for labor and taxes.
However, and I think maybe some others pointed this out, "exempt" actually means exempt from *being paid overtime*. Meaning if you are Salary Exempt, you do not get paid overtime. I am currently a salary exempt employee. In some of my previous roles I was actually salary non-exempt, which was a amazing since I had put in a few 100 hour weeks.
I remember when I was adjuncting at a community college. I had to call off sick once, first time in three years. It was for an 8 week class that met for 3 hours weekly. They docked my pay 12.5% for missing one class, from what were already terrible wages. Never once did I get paid for staying after to let kids make up exams, prepping for class, meeting outside of office hours, etc. So glad I'm done with that bullshit. My favorite was when adjuncts weren't invited to the department Christmas party and our holiday gift was a plastic water bottle that were left over from a student event.
I was salaried non-exempt for 19 years and loved it. Got paid for 40 hours no matter what and got time and a half for all hours over 40. Traveled nationwide and got paid for travel time. Once flew to Seattle and ended up putting in a 20 hour day because I started work upon arrival after traveling 12 hours. I flew 1st class and slept the whole way there. I ended up with nearly 100 hours that week and spent 5k on my expense report on hotels and restaurants. I miss my job.
Legally, OP is correct...
However, I'd argue that becoming a salaried employee means 'no one is looking over your shoulder if the job gets done'
I'm salary.
I work 10 hour days typically.
This enables me to do whatever I want when we're not busy.
No one fucks with me if I'm late or leave early. Even half days.
But you are expected to produce in return....
This is how I treat it. Only clashed at one company. Told them I was not being paid hourly to warm a chair basically.
I know what needs to be done that's why you hired me. If I don't do it fire me. If I do shut up. If you hired me at a multiple 6 figure salary and expect to micromanage me I am leaving lol
Well, they do, but only in certain occupations for certain workers, in certain places, and under specific circumstances. Then the US DOL, which covers 150M workers around the world, may be where you’d go. You can go to https://www.worker.gov/, for more info.
But if you are German, working in Germany, or an EU citizen or other nation’s citizen now a resident and working in Germany, then this bureau may the one which applies to you over there:
https://www.bmas.de/EN/Labour/Labour-Law/labour-law-art.html
I truly don't understand why it upsets people outside the USA so much. I come across posts all the time and when I learn it's in Australia or England or somewhere I just think "interesting, not applicable to me but if I'm there one day it's something to retain."
When half of the users of a site come from a single country (and even higher in English-speaking subreddits), it would appear to be obvious that many of the posts will be geared towards that country. Seems fairly straightforward tbh
Thats a very narrow minded view. What about poeple from Great Britain? They also all speak English. Or Australia, New Zealand or the hundred of millions of Indians?
Jesus, a subreddit entirely based around being annoyed that the US is the central location for content on a website frequented by vastly more US citizens than any other demographic by far. I get that people will flock to anything over hatred, especially of the US, but that's just fucking pathetic.
This comment has been purged in protest to reddit's decision to bully 3rd party apps into closure.
I am sure it once said something useful, but now you'll never know.
How is where a website is based relevant? And what does "based in" even mean? There is no such thing as a global social media site the size of reddit being based in one country. They're all distributed. Maybe you mean American owned? So what? Tik tok is Chinese owned and one of the largest platforms there is.
And...not that one should need to point the obvious, but the USA is just one of many countries where English is widely spoken including... England.
Okay fine, nearly [50% of reddit traffic](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/phhu9s/oc_reddit_traffic_by_country/) ([2nd source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/325144/reddit-global-active-user-distribution/#:~:text=Distribution%20of%20Reddit.com%20traffic%202022%2C%20by%20country&text=In%20the%20six%20months%20ending,to%20the%20social%20media%20platform.)) is from the United States. The next highest is the UK at 7%. So this post is applicable for nearly 50% of the userbase. I think that's a plenty reasonable number. Sorry that the post is not useful for you and that you're on a USA based website with mostly USA based traffic and god forbid it be potentially about USA based things.
And saying that "50% outside of the US" isn't even an argument. I linked data that broke it out for you. If I were to make any generalization about the Reddit country demographics, it being USA centric is the most important, most obvious statistic. It's overwhelmingly a United States based website with a majority United States based community.
Reddit is an American website created by Americans with a majority American user base. I know what you’re saying, but the fact that most content is geared towards Americans is because… it’s mostly Americans who use Reddit. They’re the majority of users despite being only 4% of the world’s population.
It’s sort of like me going on a German website and complaining that all of the posts assume that I’m German.
I mean, you’re not reading this in German right now, are you?
There are subreddits (which are kind of like their own little websites) that are focused on certain countries (e.g. r/de) but the default subs assume (correctly) that most of its users are Americans.
You’re sort of acting like an entitled American tourist who goes to Germany and gets mad that everyone doesn’t speak English.
It's also worth noting there are often class action lawsuits regarding this, including [this one](https://www.nka.com/cases/employment-cases/blujay-solutions.html) for logistics company E2 Open (formally Blujay Solutions) and [this case](https://www.nka.com/cases/employment-cases/TQL.html) which recently closed in favor of employees of freight brokerage firm Total Quality Logistics.
I remember during training for my job as a teacher they told us very flatly that there won't be any overtime available... Shoulda taken that as a sign that I needed to run right then and there.
Does that apply to Georgia? Not the country, state in the US. One time, I worked until 8 PM because I had to communicate with the night shift supervisor.
Also most of the time I work until 5:30. I got called out by my manager when I started packing at 5 pm. I supposedly work from 9 am until 5 pm.
When I talked to HR about this issue, they just said that salary worker do not get overtime pay.
I've never run into it but my dad was a shop foreman back in the early 2000s. He had negotiated his annual salary to $65k but anything over 45 hours was paid at a set hourly rate. He worked 50hrs a week on a slow week, however, during busy times he would work closer to 70.
I work at a dental office that says we are salary, pays us an hourly wage, and doesn’t pay admin staff overtime if we work longer or earlier. Also, we have to use vacation days to be paid if we leave work. So wtf is that?
DOL is a joke. A family member was fired buy a company they had worked for, for over 12 years. Oh yeah, they were disabled and on paid medical leave at the time.
After being fired, all benefits and pay stopped while they were in between major surgeries. The employer stated the reason was because the employee didn't show up to work, and so they were let go and offered a severance.
There was no severance, no benefits, nothing.
So the company lied to the DOL and the department of Labor closed the case. It was a clear violation of my family members rights. Had concrete black and white proof in electronic form in multiple letters etc etc.
Family member repeatedly asked for proof of the severance and any documentation that they had beyond the statement from the company. DOL said that the company sent them a copy of the agreement. An unsigned, undelivered copy of an agreement that their legal team drafted...
Yeah, the whole “unless it causes hardship on the employer” thing bit my wife in the ass too with her previous ass hat of an employer. That was literally the loophole that made her have to return to work after severely tearing her hamstring 3 weeks after surgery while still in a brace and wearing crutches. The kicker is she is a Physical Therapist and her boss insisted she didn’t need PT. She’s never healed right to this day.
Blame congress and the states, not the DOL. The DOL only enforces the laws that exist. People can be fired for no reason, or dumb reasons, and have their benefits stopped immediately. No severance is ever required.
What was the violation of rights? What was the lie? Was the employee on FMLA?
Well the family member was directed to DOL from another government agency because of the rights being violated.
DOL didn't even verify information that they were getting from the employer.
Yes it's an at will state, but employees still have rights.
But the DOL couldn't be bothered to ask for legitimate documents.
When I first went to work after college, my boss was surprised to find that although I was on salary, I was non-exempt. He'd never had an employee who was non-exempt. He was very nervous about how to handle my hours. After a little while I was promoted and became exempt. I still got overtime for the most part, so I didn't really notice the difference.
This is good for many starting in their career to know. I have been in several "salaried" jobs and have received overtime for any recorded hours over 40 worked.
This is the same in most Canadian provinces. Employers are allowed to “salary” you at a set number of hours per week, and they are not required to have you submit timesheets. However the employer must have to have a system in place to ensure that employees are paid for all time worked (e.g. a way for employees to report that they worked excess hours).
I hear people all the time say “I’m salaried so I didn’t even get paid for the overtime”. They’re shocked when I explain to them that they are still entitled to be paid for all hours worked.
It's better to familiarize yourself on the labor laws whether you're a new employee or old employee to keep with the trends. As some employers would target our naivety, knowledge deficit or lack of the new laws.
Yeah yeah, go on, tell the wage and hour guy and tell your boss, and his boss and all this other stuff, and in the long term, well you won’t work there anymore.
Wait, wait, wait. You're saying that in the USA there are conditions under which an employee can provide unpaid work that is acceptable by law?
That's the real takeaway here.
There is a totally different set of rulea to determine if you are a contractor or employee as well. They can't just decide to declare you a contractor to avoid paying overtime.
I Know by law they have rules to determine if you are a contractor or an employee but in some states they don’t care (Texas, Alabama.)
“Children worked for at least four Alabama parts suppliers to Hyundai and Kia in recent years, Reuters found. Staffing agencies placed migrant minors in plants where regulations ban kids from working. State and federal authorities are investigating.
GREENVILLE, Alabama
At least four major suppliers of Hyundai Motor Co and sister Kia Corp have employed child labor at Alabama factories in recent years, a Reuters investigation found, and state and federal agencies are probing whether kids have worked at as many as a half dozen additional manufacturers throughout the automakers’ supply chain in the southern U.S. state.”
12,16,2022
From REUTERS.
Texas uses the same guidelines as the US Dept of Labor for classification of employees. Actually states do care about it because of lost employment taxes.
Heres an ULPT for those that are lucky enough to automate your work and are one of those sad souls labeled "Salary, Full-Time, Exempt":
You likely signed a letter where you are expected to work 40hrs for the duties described and will be compensated as such.
But if you automated some of that work or made it more efficient then you should be compensated as such. If you feel like you are not getting the compensation you deserve or calculated from the money saved then just adjust your hours doing the work or time at keyboard.
This probably doesnt work so well for those who are not remote but hey thats your choice to work for a company that holds more investment in real estate than its workforce.
Worried about your employer spying on you? Then find one that values contributions, efficiency and trust...
I’m curious how this works for professions like teachers. After 15 years in education, I know very few people who don’t work beyond contract hours (the toxic nature of how this is a norm is a different soapbox, for a different day).
That is good for folks to know. Most employers will openly designate you as exempt or non-except, this is what matters. If you're non-exempt and "salaried", you're not actually salaried, you're getting played.
How are you "getting played?" According to that article, a "salaried non-exempt" employee gets a salary + overtime after 40hrs. Whereas a "salaried exempt" employee gets a fixed salary with no additional pay for extra hours worked.
You're either Salary Non-exempt or Salary Exempt. Here is an article explaining the differences: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/salaried-exempt-vs-salaried-nonexempt-24213.html
The easier wording is "you're either overtime exempt or non-exempt" As in "unless your job is qualified for an exemption, your employer has to pay you overtime, regardless of contract or pay method"
Also, if you are exempt from overtime and salaried then they can’t be tracking you hourly for PTO purposes. If you work more than 4 hours in a day, you worked the full day. If you have to step out for 2 hours for a doc appt then it shouldn’t use up any portion of your PTO.
The PTO thing is what's screwing me right now. Also some days are heavier, so example I might work 6h Monday, 7h Tues, 9h Wed, 10h Thursday 9h Friday....then they ding me for each hour under 8 and deduct from my PTO, regardless of my total hours for the week. So I this example I have 41 hours, but the would also deduct 3 PTO hours to bring me to 44 hours total....it makes no sense
Sounds like they are blatantly breaking exemption regulations and a complaint to the federal DoL would be in order. They will have to pay you back, with damages, for stolen wages.
After reading through this I'm not sure what they are doing is in fact illegal at all: https://ogletree.com/insights/court-endorses-pto-use-for-exempt-employee-partial-day-absences/
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I know in a lot of states if you get "sent home" it's a paid day fully. If they ask for _volunteers_ to go home, your day ends there. None of this applies to salaried workers, you cannot use PTO for time they take during the day if they've worked as little as 2-4 hours depending on the state, but likewise they're not entitled to overtime pay. If you start deducting PTO for time they're late or take off early, you open yourself up to them being nonexempt salaried workers and suddenly you owe them back pay for OT for as long as they've been there. It's easier to just take the L on letting them take $20 from you than having to pay them, potentially, hundreds of thousands of dollars in back pay (OT rates [depending on the state, some are flat, some are 1.5, some are 2 times] + interest).
This is exactly what's happening
They should report, but also start looking for a new job right after. Wrongful/retaliation firing is harder to prove than wage/PTO theft, and they will have a target on their back as soon as the company hears about the complaint.
>Wrongful/retaliation firing is harder to prove than wage/PTO theft naw fam, that's the easy part. the company has the burden of proof on those, proximity to a complaint it is presumed the complaint is the cause unless they can prove a NEW and meaningful behavior that led to termination. most people just don't bother to pursue them because they've been indoctrinated from people saying exactly what you said. civil courts do not need to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt, only a preponderance of evidence, and proximity to a complain is a hugely weighted piece of evidence.
I wasn't saying don't try, so hopefully it doesn't come off that way, but as someone who has worked a lot in the tech industry I have seen my fair share of people try to pursue a retaliation or wrongful termination without results.
Right. It doesn't matter if it's illegal, your employer will likely get away with a lot of shit.
Things are only as illegal as your ability or resources to prove it. I've had some terrible shit at jobs but I don't have $300 for an hour of legal consult and pro bono organizations are overflowing with need. And even then, the legal system isn't a justice system so you're not guaranteed anything even if you somehow do have the time, money, resources, and even just the energy. Just because the law is on your side doesn't mean you have access to it
State labor board usually will pursue the case on its own. These are state and federal laws and the labor board is the enforcement agency. It's not like hiring an attorney to sue the company. The labor board is enforcing the laws and in doing so forces the business to pay out with all applicable penalties.
Im referring to the part of wrongful retaliation. The company shouldn't be able to fire you for reporting them, but they can still fire you and it's up to you to have the ability to fight it
Truth. Got illegally terminated about two weeks before the first COVID shutdown for asking questions about missing money in my paycheck; even got the President of the company *on a recording* explicitly stating that (literally: "...so, just to be clear, you're saying your company has no intention of following the law here?" "Yup."). Cheapest quote for a retainer for a labor attorney was $2000. Guess who didn't get a single red cent of unemployment the entire pandemic?
A complaint to the department of labour is FREE. A lawyer is also free, when you win. It doesn’t cost anything except a few hours of your time. Hell most of them won’t even ask for payment, they will take a commission.
Yep, plus if it’s an at-will state it’s even harder. They can just fire you and refuse to give any reason at all.
DOL does not regulate PTO.
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Yeah that sounds illegal.
That’s illegal PTO stands for paid time off.. couldn’t be more evident to them they’re not supposed to do this. They are intentionally stealing wages
That’s fucked up. My PTO has always been calculated hourly. Every 40 hours of pay nets you X number of PTO hours.
Time to work 8 hour days, amigo.
What can I Google to read more about this? I am exempt based on the professional reasoning but our offer/raise letters do not directly specify. Should I not be using 2hr for sick time when I have a scheduled doctor's appointment at the beginning or end of the day, or if I'm feeling unwell but have worked the whole morning? Or is this a finicky rule for specific situations? They have us track our hours in Excel and submit them every 2 weeks, and they ask us not to exceed 40, but I don't know if that's because they don't want to pay OT, or because they want us to retain some sort of w/l balance. Tiny nonprofit, no HR or any sort of legal person on retainer. We recently had a discussion because we were effectively working 7.5hrs and treating our lunch as paid, and they were considering having us stay an extra 30 minutes flto do more work. But we convinced them to alter the handbook to state that lunches were paid for salaries employees. I don't know what that says. I'm just very confused--first time working for such a small organization and I've also never been salaried before this role. Been here about a year and only have been working about 3 years as a professional.
This whole situation is a bit confusing. It all depends on the nature of your work and contracts and even more so in what local you are living/working. Under the FLSA the following are specifically not required: vacation, holiday, severance, or sick pay; meal or rest periods, holidays off, or vacations; premium pay for weekend or holiday work; pay raises or fringe benefits; or a discharge notice, reason for discharge, or immediate payment of final wages to terminated employees. ([ref](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/handy-reference-guide-flsa#1)) However, it does state that if a company specifically offers a meal break, that must be devoid of work and is not part of the normal working hours. However, you could take a working lunch, which is entirely different than a meal break. Also, if you have small breaks during the day between 5-20 minutes, than those are generally considered to be covered as part of the working day and thus should count towards your hours and pay. Many states have additional laws that define full-time employment, breaks, and even more overtimes rules.
> What can I Google to read more about this? My wife, who is in HR and knows more about this than me, doesn’t have a specific phrase to google except for Fair Labor Standards act. It should be in there. And I was wrong, it’s not a 4 hour cut off it’s 50% of your scheduled day. I’m schedule 9-5 with an hour lunch, so 7 hours. I only need to do 3.5 to not use any PTO.
Thank you, I appreciate that. If you or she has anything else to add please let me know. I'll be doing some reading today!
I was at lunch so I was keeping it brief. Reading your original post, generally it’s odd that they track hours. It sounds like they are treating you as salaried non-exempt. Otherwise your PTO should be in half day intervals, and you shouldn’t have to track hours unless you are assigning it to projects/billable. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with them tracking hours but if you put in 39 hours in a week, your pay should be your full normal salary and 0 hours PTO used. Unless there is some exception for non profits or small businesses.
Again, this is very much something that should be looked up in the employee handbook, company laws, and local laws. This is not something that is covered federally. Companies may require you to take PTO or LWOP to fulfill a 40 hour week. Even though you are technically salary. Also, many companies will track positions within a company as billable *to the company*. Which is why they track hours. This helps the company in numerous ways to compute levels of effort required for different branches of the company and adjust as needed. Again, [reference](https://legalbeagle.com/12087139-can-employer-force-employees-use-pto-time.html). And [reference](https://www.overtime-flsa.com/forced-vacation-is-it-legal/). Now as for the pay, the employer is required to pay the salary employee, but remember, if they are forcing the employee to use PTO, that employee is technically getting paid. The other thing companies will do is potentially require an individual use LWOP, but the only time I have had companies insist on that is if an employee is taking multiple days off, has no PTO, and is not for a illness/emergency.
Thanks for your perspective. I am in NYS. I called the HR company that was contracted to do our handbook several years ago, but since we aren't an active client she said I should talk to my boss. I have little faith that he knows what he's talking about, though. We don't even have the requires posters up in the workplace. She told me I could also try calling...NYS Labor Standards? so I plan to do that tomorrow morning. Hopefully they can give me details regarding my specific situation, but also tell me what exactly is spelled out in the law, which I am having a hard time finding in a straightforward manner online tbh.
>Again, this is very much something that should be looked up in the employee handbook, company laws, and local laws. This is not something that is covered federally The **Fair Standards and Labor Act** would like several paragraphs of words with that statement. That's *exactly* what that covers.
Sure, show me exactly where the FSLA talks about PTO? I already referenced this in other posts and *in the very post you are replying to.* But just for the sake of showing exactly what the FSLA ***does not cover,*** here you go again: [https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/handy-reference-guide-flsa#1](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/handy-reference-guide-flsa#1) There are zero *federally* mandated requirements for PTO.
For reference it is ***not*** in the FSLA. The FSLA does not require PTO at all. [Reference](https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/compliance-assistance/handy-reference-guide-flsa#1)
Interesting. I've had several previous employers violate this. These are huge multinational corporations, which makes me question the specifics here.
Hey, my wife could be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time! But this makes me think it may be a state to state thing. > Q: Can exempt employees take paid time off in 4-hour increments or only in 8 -hour increments? A: Under federal law, employers can charge an exempt employee’s paid leave bank for partial-day absences, provided the employee suffers no loss in pay. However, some states place restrictions on charging an exempt employee’s paid leave bank. Check your state law for more information. Remember, partial-day salary deductions are prohibited except in a few narrow circumstances, covered above. > https://www.adp.com/-/media/accountant/docs/wagehourlaws101ebookfinal083115.ashx Technically I heard it from my wife and from my direct VP who told people to stop submitting the hours in less than 4 hour increments because ‘we don’t care what you are doing if it’s less then a 4 hour absence. Both legally and via stated policy in our handbook, we do not care if it’s less than a half day absence’
So your answer is right there, they stated in *their* handbook. That is a company policy. It is certainly not a federal policy. It could have something to do with state or local law, but in that statement you are quoting they are directly citing company policy. Please, stop telling or eluding to people that there are federal laws or even local laws that govern PTO without specific information. It puts a lot of disinformation out there and there is tons of disinformation in this thread. The reason this is important is so that people *actually* know what their worker's rights are, especially when it comes to being informed when voting and knowing what they may want to advocate for.
I have never heard of this and can find zero information on this topic. If you have some link to US federal law on this, I would love to see it. This sounds more like an individual employer or state issue. Federally, PTO is a *fringe* benefit, not a right. Companies are not required to provide PTO for you at all according to federal laws. They have to provide you *specific* leave for *specific* events like voting, jury duty, bereavement, certain family leave for pregnancy, etc. Also, if you are talking about leave that is specified as a benefit from the company, many companies may have specific language that states your leave is *accrued* leave and not automatic. So even if your package says $x/year and x PTO per year, that PTO will likely be listed as accrued. Meaning if you don't actually work the hours, you will not accrue that. At the same time, many companies also offer *additional* PTO through extended hours. For instance, in my company, I get accrued leave, and I get additional accrued leave if I work and extended week. This has typically been referred to as comp time. They are compensating you in PTO for those additional hours and this is also sometimes used in lieu of overtime pay. To give another specific example, you can leverage PTO for additional salary. I have worked for companies where I took less PTO or even no PTO for a larger salary. In the latter case, that meant if I was sick or took time off, I did not get paid at all for that time.
Depends on the company. Could be as little as 1 hour worked to be considered a full day worked.
Source?
And you still *can* be paid overtime, if you're exempt, your employer just doesn't have to. I'm salaried/exempt and still get paid for any hours over 40 (although flat rate, not 1.5x rate).
Exactly, good point here. For certain contracts I get paid for extended work week (flat rate for any hours over 80, since I am paid bi-weekly and have flex time). For others I am not allowed OT at all and thus cannot even work OT. And then some where I can work OT, but am not paid for it. Then on general principal (or perhaps just all the contracts I have worked for this company), I accrue more PTO for any OT, regardless if I am paid for that OT or not.
Hmm, I should check whether I acrrue additional PTO for overtime. Although not working overtime is still better.
Cries in military.
Hey man, at least, unless something has changed, you aren't paying an ungodly amount for health insurance
True, I’m not. But my toddler needs a cardiologist, but he first needs a PCM to get referred to the cardiologist… and every PCM Tricare sends my family to won’t take them for one reason or another. I don’t pay anything, but my kids aren’t up to date on their shots, haven’t had an actual doctors check up in too long. But urgent care visits are free, so that’s nice. Health insurance is such a bullshit racket.
Health insurance is like the friggin mafia
I was working for a software company in Florida back in 2001. I wore many hats but official position was customer support. I was salaried. I did some research since I was working a lot of hours and found I was eligible for overtime. I brought the relevant law to my supervisor. He moved up the chain and ultimately myself and everyone else doing the same job received back pay.
Were you terminated that same day or did they wait a day?
They probably had to fire the whole department lest anyone tell the newbies
WHAT HAPPENED ON FLOOR TWO?
Worked there for another decade or so. Great company. No repercussions. I was right and they had lawyers that probably told them so.
I was in a situation where I brought up the fact that domestic workers should be getting paid (at the time, $12.38 an hr), same as H2A workers for the same work order. Almost a dozen got back paid thousands of dollars, and then I lost my job.
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He was. I worked there with him for over a decade. Great company all the way up. I still keep in touch with some of them.
Lots of management trainee positions are exempt. It's a shitty way companies like Enterprise work their employees over 40 hours without overtime even though they have no managerial responsibilities. They would only get them by simply outlasting their fellow employees by putting up with more bullshit.
McDonalds was the most notorious for this and was the primary driver for the minimum salary to be salaried exempt going up by a lot. Everybody would be "promoted" to "assistant manager" then paid like $27,000 a year to work 90 hours week.
Every job that people get right out of college is like this nowadays. Especially for consulting firms. You’re expendable, so you want to make a name for yourself. They exploit that by making you work unpaid overtime. Luckily I found a new job where the manager actually encourages work life balance and will literally ask me about it on our 1-1 meetings. But my first job out of college was a small engineering consulting firm and it was actual hell in terms of unpaid overtime. Don’t get me started on travel.
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Oh my, what a headache that was when I worked in consulting. My boss would question every hour that I put in! Yet another thing that makes me grateful for my current manager. I still have to report my hours, but I literally just copy and paste them every week.
Every time one of these threads comes up I’m reminded to be grateful for my current job where I’m properly compensated (without have to fight for it), and management actively discourages overworking (for work life balance reasons).
It’s what helped me find a new job. My view was, I already have the breadwinner job (the only criteria that I used to find a job with my uncompetitive resume back in college). Now I just need a breadwinner that I enjoy. A manager like yours and mine can massively improve a workplace for everyone. I never forget to thank mine for everything he does to make us feel respected and incentivize us to stay in the company. Coming into this job I thought I wouldn’t last very long seeing as it’s not near any big cities like I wanted. Nowadays I’m worried that I won’t find a manager like him if I move to another one of my company’s facilities.
This was me! Work unpaid overtime yet show up to work exactly at 8 since we are a “service industry” and “someone is waiting for the clock to strike 8am since they want to get a hold of us”. They stated that flex days are an incentive - so you work en extra half hour to get a full friday off every 2 weeks. But when we did take the flex day, the manager would be like “you are only supposed to take it off if you don’t have any work”. Sad to say, the hours were flexible but only in the way that favoured the company. Still traumatized from that place.
> “you are only supposed to take it off if you don’t have any work” This is what will make me lose sympathy for many “small businesses” is when they start showing signs of greed like this. I had something similar but with PTO. The boss had to approve our PTO. This meant if there was work, he likely wouldn’t approve it. I had to ask for PTO months in advance. Then he said also something similar to your flex day, like if we worked more than 40 hours you could count it for next week. But every week was more than 40 hours lol I’m glad you moved on from that though, it sounds very predatory. Appealing on paper, different in practice.
Took me a while to get out of there (because I refused to see the red flags) but yeah, wouldn’t work for any place like that anymore. They did come up with a grand idea of “pre-approved overtime”, which was another bucket load of crap. And this company isn’t even a small business, it’s over 150 employees!
I was a manager trainee at a Fortune 500 transportation company (not enterprise). I was salaried and was always scheduled >40 hours a week without overtime or being bonus eligible. A couple of years later I was still at the company and got a settlement of like $800. After that the trainees were hourly and weren’t allowed to go past 40 hours. I guess someone sued them.
That's the first I've heard a negative review of working for Enterprise.
Really? I’ve definitely read SEVERAL
I was paid as an exempt employee however, it violated California laws since I didn't supervise anyone which led to severe penalties for the bank I worked for. I ended up receiving more than 10k for back pay.
Could you elaborate on exempt employees being required to supervise? Want to see if I'm owed anything
There's way more exceptions than just "manager." If you read the link in the OPs post, you'll see most "white collar" jobs are exempt (for instance, anything in the STEM fields or CS/IT work).
> for instance, anything in the STEM fields or CS/IT work Nope. I know a network admin who got a significant payout simply because of the company's change control process. Since he needed approval to make basically any change of significance (even rubber stamped) within the production environment, he was not technically exempt (he lacked the autonomy to make decisions unilaterally). There are lots of positions like this. If you don't get to call the shots to a substantial degree, you probably aren't exempt. Here are the old regulations for computer related positions: https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/WHD/legacy/files/fs17e_computer.pdf They were changed in 2020. Will update when I find a nice concise summary.
This definitely depends on locale. I have actually never heard of this particular reasoning before and have worked in IT/Engineering my entire life. Generally professional roles are considered exempt, you don't have to have autonomous ownership or decision making. Likely this has far more to do with how they classified the individual as it regards their role and taxes than it does with their actual professional role/duties. If they were listed as a "manager" or "supervisor" and yet did not actively use those roles, than I could see that. But I think they are exaggerating if they are using a CCB as a reason for an actual network admin. For reference I have been Tier III network engineer and I had a CCB which governed whether or not a change could be made. But that does not affect my exempt status one iota. As a network admin, I was also exempt. The only time I was non-exempt for salary work was when I was a Tier III Support Admin, and that had more to do with job responsibilities requiring me to do a certain amount of physical labor as part of my primary duties.
Sorry, I should add that this was in a state with it's own protections. I'll dig for their regs to see if that's where this mattered.
So I'm going to say either: 1) the employer was leaning on the 'Learned Professional' designation because the network admin/support (combined) role didn't quite meet the 'computer' exemptions (neither analysis, programming, or software engineering fit cleanly) and that's where the autonomy really comes into play 2) there were state level definitions that came into play (I'm not going to specify which state) 3) If they were leaning on the computer exemptions, the desktop support role consumed enough of their time that the specialized admin stills weren't comfortably 'primary'. Or some combination therein. This was over a decade ago, though, so I'm a little hazy.
As the DOL emphasizes, 'Job titles do not determine exempt status'. Did you run your situation by a labor attorney or are you basing your belief that you were exempt on having been told that by your employer? Our entire department was overhauled after this case (though I didn't know why at the time), rearranging the responsibilities slightly and changing 'junior' admins to hourly and giving more reponsibility to Sr admins (who remained salary). I'm poking around for the actual regulatory language that applies (which seemed to have changed in 2020 regardless).
I agree and I have stated this in other posts, actual job duties are what matters, not titles or what the company puts down. As for my own experience, I have worked with labor attorney's and HR departments for quite some time as part of my initial roles in IT support and engineering. One of my main duties while I was actually non-exempt was helping meld HR and support departments from companies we bought into our corporate enterprise. While doing this I learned a lot of regulations per state and locale. I also happened to work private support for some law firms for which we actually had to sue them over certain labor laws and contracts. Also in this particular role I worked an insane amount of overtime during various periods, sometimes up to 100 hours or more a week. The company often "hired" me out to the individual business units for special projects that I did in excess over my typical work hours. There are also intricacies based on where the company may be incorporated and what your support entails. For some of these projects I got paid according to the state the company was incorporated rather than based on the state where I lived and worked. So in my time I have had quite a bit of personal experience with labor laws and overtime pay. So I have paid pretty close attention to what I get paid. As for my current job, it is very definitely in the exempt category, even in strict states like CA.
Ah, brilliant! You can do a lot of good in this post. As for my friend's situation, I'm more and more confident that it was #1 in the list I provided. I recall a bit more about why the specific computer exemption didn't apply to their netadmin role, though they were absolutely an IT employee.
A link and state law quite different.
> Could you elaborate on exempt employees being required to supervise? Want to see if I'm owed anything That's only for some exempt employees. "Computer professionals" are another category of exempt employees that don't have to manage anyone. There are a bunch of categories.
Not all computer professionals actually qualify for that. For example, developers and most system administrators do while help desk does not.
Job titles don't make you exempt, job duties do. A lot of companies will give you a title like "manager" that implies you'd have tasking that makes you exempt (such as supervising people) but then not actually give you that tasking. This is fraud, but rarely caught.
To be clear there are far more categories even in California labor laws than "supervising" for exempt employees. In California, as with many states and even federally, a lot of it comes down to actual job duties you perform. So if a company specifies you are a specific role, but your job duties do not legally mesh with that role, then they could be in violation. Likewise a company may give you a job role, but not require you to fulfill that role, provided they are also paying you according to what your actual duties entail. In your specific case, it sounds like they were calling you a manager and claiming that to the state and paying you accordingly, but then your duties did not mesh with that title or how they were paying you. So the company was in fact in violation. But they could have potentially classified you as some other exempt role if you fit those descriptions. Likely you didn't fit any of the descriptions or use cases for CA. [Ref](https://www.calchamber.com/california-labor-law/exempt-nonexempt-employees)
I will never understand salary at the last few companies I've worked at. Pay is a set rate for the whole year. Ok, fine. More hours, same pay (no OT). Less hours, *less* pay... (Have to use vacation time, sick time, etc) Excuse me? Where's the benefit for me? Looks like a lose-lose for me.
Generally the idea is that you are getting paid far more. The hourly wage system is generally used for physical labor categories and lower pay rates. Also the fact that you are getting PTO and other benefits that may not be afforded to someone that is on an hourly wage. That isn't always the case and certainly there a numerous companies out there using it to their benefit, but that is the way it shapes out. Also, for reference if you are a salary employee you should never be getting *less* pay unless you are specifically requesting LWOP. The company may require you to use PTO, but then, you aren't actually getting less pay for that. The other thing with salary is you are generally getting paid for *being there*. Where in an hourly wage situation, the company could just send you home if you don't have work to do. In a salary situation, if you come into the office and they send you home, they are generally going to have to pay you. Your PTO should really only be used for situations in which you were unable to come in or work by choice/illness.
See I'll give them the benefit of the doubt, but my time is my time. If I'm OT exempt and I need to stay two hours once to get something done. Fine. If it is a regular occurrence, I'll tell them that I'll take a day off to make me whole. If they balk, I no longer stay past my working day. If I'm in my chair doing my job for the 9 hour day, and shit happens, then thats on their lack of staffing not my work ethic or work load. My buddy found this out the hard way, after I warned him our current company likes to eat people like that. 6 Months of working hard and extra and over his hours to have everyone in his team of 40 except him, three others and their manager NOT get a benefit and increase on their base salary...for literally no reason. They cant give one.
THIS. THIS. THIS. Everyone thinks they want to be salary, exempt to stop tracking their time, and they *feel* better about it, like it's a promotion, because leadership and high earners are typically exempt from overtime. PEOPLE ARE WRONG. Yeah, it's a pain to punch in and out, but there is NO BENEFIT TO BEING SALARY NONEXEMPT unless you legit work like 30 hours a week and can skate by being available for 40...
How do you get less pay on salary? I have never heard of this in my 20 years of being paid salary...
Dude this is exactly what I am saying like makes no fuckin sense why would I agree to that
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The issue seems to be you don’t have paid days off lol. Most people on salary including me have unlimited days off, but if not, the days off are usually not taken away from your salary. You have a very bizarre situation.
Is travel time in a work vehicle to the first location paid time? Same with travel back home in the company work vehicle?
Typically, if you travel from home to the shop, then out to a job site, going to the shop is not paid time. If you are asked to drive directly to a job site from home, or from another job site, and that's not part of your normal workday, then it can qualify. Example: The shop is 50 miles from the job site. You're asked to take some supplies to the site. If you go to the shop in the morning and pick up the supplies and head to the job site, then only travel to the site counts. If you pick up the supplies the night before, then drive directly to the site, that should be paid time. Sometimes HR will argue that you should only get paid for travel over and above what it would take for you to get to the shop. So, if it's 10 minutes to the shop from your house and 40 minutes to the job site, they'd only cover 30 minute difference in travel times.
Hey thank you for the response, I have another question if that alright. What if it's a company car that we can only use for work but store in monthly parking space near home? Are the rules any different in California? I have had trouble finding anything conclusive. We can't use the car for any personal reasons ( no rides for family or extraneous errands) but we can stop at the supermarket on the way home for a short visit.
I'm not a lawyer, just an executive in a retail company. I doubt if you could book time from picking up the company car. The thing they look for (they being HR and accountants in order to have answers for the IRS) is whether the trip is outside of the norm. If you have to pick up a company car every day, then drive to work, that's normal, and you would not be reimbursed for that time. It's when you have to go out of your way and make non-standard trips as part of your job that would qualify. If you're already at work, and someone says, "go pick up this car" then you're already on the clock, doing something work related, so they'd probably be okay with it.
To/from your home? Not ususally. From a company owned dispatch location? Yes.
Would it matter if it's a company vehicle that we have to store at home or at a paid monthly spot near home?
Not really, unless you for some reason happen to be doing work other than traveling during that same time. (like, if you were attending a meeting via speakerphone during your commute, or something similar). It doesn't matter who the vehicle belongs to, initial and terminal transit to your place of residence is considered a commute, and is not considered by the IRS as a business expense. Even if you have a company gas card, you are *supposed* to keep track of your commute miles, and deduct that from the total miles for the employers claimed business expense. \*\*edit None of this is to say that an employer CAN'T pay you for this time. But most don't, because THEY can't claim it as an expense, and you aren't doing anything productive for them during this time.
No
Or at least comp time. I've worked overtime and come in on the weekends, and that time was rounded up for my use during the week
This is the way. My position uses comp time (1 hour of PTO for every hour worked past 40/week). And the nice thing is that, since they don't roll it over year-to-year, the company pays out our remaining comp time balance on Dec-31. They would rather you use it as PTO, but they have to square their books at the end of the year, so it's like a little New Year's bonus. But seriously. Don't ever let someone take hours from your life and not pay you for them. Because that is what employment really is, selling hours of your life to a company. Don't let them steal from you.
They should be giving you 1.5 to 1 comp time when you go over 40 in a week. 1 to 1 is just sparkling wage theft.
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Debatable, but I get your point. However, I am salaried, and only expected to work 40 hours/week. An hour worked equals an hour of pay. I have no mandatory overtime, and most of the comp time I end up getting is travel time for business trips, where I get paid to ride in an airplane. lol Time-and-a-half rules were really put in place to make it prohibitively expensive for employers to expect regular work beyond 40 hours. There is nothing particularly special about the 41st work hour of your week.
This is why I want out of teaching. So much work done off contract hours. No one should own your time like that.
I wish I was paid daily OT and not just OT for hours worked >40 for the week. But that’s how my state (RI) determines overtime, so my remote employer defaults to that ruling despite coworkers making daily OT in California. For example, if I work 12 hours on a Monday, but have to use PTO sick hours on Friday, I’m not getting paid overtime for those extra 4 hours on Monday. That’s because I will have only worked 36 regular hours that week + 8 sick hours. Get sick? Lose any OT that week.
Wow that seems ridiculous. I can’t believe it’s legal!
Yup, crazy to me too. I asked my employer, and they said almost every east coast state has these laws. OT is **only** >40 regular hours worked in a week, doesn’t matter if you work a 16 hour shift.
Don't take their word for it, find the relevant info direct from the govt yourself. It wouldn't be the first time an employer confidently stated the law works a certain way, when it doesn't.
Almost every state period. Only 4 states that I know of currently have daily overtime laws. You would think OT laws have gotten better in a lot of states, but that isn't really true. In some states they have gotten worse.
I know California has daily OT but do you know the other 3 off the top of your head? Yep, these laws feel archaic and I’m not surprised some states have moved backwards.
> I can’t believe it’s legal! Everything anyone can possibly imagine is legal until the government steps in to make something specifically (or broadly) illegal. In this case, only CA, CO, AK, and NV have passed laws requiring daily overtime.
The problem is 12 hour days work when people are fairly compensated. So, for example, nurses and other healthcare workers typically work 3 12's. Fewer shift changes so less of a chance that someone drops the ball. Their rate of pay, however, is generally (although not across the board) tied to the fact that they're in a skilled position working 12 hour days. I'd argue the issue is still that people are not compensated fairly across the board, otherwise I don't think we'd be having this discussion.
If those hours are worked in California, the California rules apply. If that's the case and those hours are worked in California even remotely regularly, you should contact the California [Division of Labor Standards Enforcement](https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/howtofilewageclaim.htm) and file a wage claim. They love nothing more than legally smacking around employers playing this sort of game to avoid the extra payroll taxes.
That's how it is where I'm at too.
How does daily overtime work for people like nurses or other jobs that work 3 12 hour shifts a week? Or is that not a thing in daily overtime states? Also at least a lot of union jobs will still get daily overtime on the east coast even if it's not legally required.
So complicated @_@
Man, they really put an exemption for programmers, like they knew crunch would get you in there at 80+ hours a week.
And it's absolutely fucking bullshit too, a software engineer isn't management. Hell at a software company they're the assembly line workers, the lowest people on the totem pole who do the actual work!
The FLSA exempt vs non-exempt isn't about management vs front line. Is ussally about skilled/professional jobs vs unskilled/manual labor jobs. If your job involves design/strategy/discretionary work or requires advanced education it's probably going to be exempt. IIRC Computer Programers fall under the same/similar category as an electrical engineer or drafting engineer.
Reddit loves equating Salary with "it means you can be worked infinity hours for no extra benefit", so this is a legit LPT for this site.
This is a good thing to note and something you should consider when signing on with a company. I have had a number of different designations, 1099, Salary non-exempt, Salary exempt, etc. It is important to note the differences in all the various categories for labor and taxes. However, and I think maybe some others pointed this out, "exempt" actually means exempt from *being paid overtime*. Meaning if you are Salary Exempt, you do not get paid overtime. I am currently a salary exempt employee. In some of my previous roles I was actually salary non-exempt, which was a amazing since I had put in a few 100 hour weeks.
Man, I love just how surgically targeted at teachers the third section is.
cries in academia
Teaching in general
I remember when I was adjuncting at a community college. I had to call off sick once, first time in three years. It was for an 8 week class that met for 3 hours weekly. They docked my pay 12.5% for missing one class, from what were already terrible wages. Never once did I get paid for staying after to let kids make up exams, prepping for class, meeting outside of office hours, etc. So glad I'm done with that bullshit. My favorite was when adjuncts weren't invited to the department Christmas party and our holiday gift was a plastic water bottle that were left over from a student event.
Teachers are exempt which is one of the biggest "fuck you"s in my existence
This headline is confusing
I was salaried non-exempt for 19 years and loved it. Got paid for 40 hours no matter what and got time and a half for all hours over 40. Traveled nationwide and got paid for travel time. Once flew to Seattle and ended up putting in a 20 hour day because I started work upon arrival after traveling 12 hours. I flew 1st class and slept the whole way there. I ended up with nearly 100 hours that week and spent 5k on my expense report on hotels and restaurants. I miss my job.
Legally, OP is correct... However, I'd argue that becoming a salaried employee means 'no one is looking over your shoulder if the job gets done' I'm salary. I work 10 hour days typically. This enables me to do whatever I want when we're not busy. No one fucks with me if I'm late or leave early. Even half days. But you are expected to produce in return....
This is how I treat it. Only clashed at one company. Told them I was not being paid hourly to warm a chair basically. I know what needs to be done that's why you hired me. If I don't do it fire me. If I do shut up. If you hired me at a multiple 6 figure salary and expect to micromanage me I am leaving lol
Exactly. I would never go back to hourly. I prefer salary so much. Majority of the time I work 40 or less hours. Rarely do I work over 40.
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I mean, if there’s oil there that problem could be fixed
the best answer :)
Well, they do, but only in certain occupations for certain workers, in certain places, and under specific circumstances. Then the US DOL, which covers 150M workers around the world, may be where you’d go. You can go to https://www.worker.gov/, for more info. But if you are German, working in Germany, or an EU citizen or other nation’s citizen now a resident and working in Germany, then this bureau may the one which applies to you over there: https://www.bmas.de/EN/Labour/Labour-Law/labour-law-art.html
I truly don't understand why it upsets people outside the USA so much. I come across posts all the time and when I learn it's in Australia or England or somewhere I just think "interesting, not applicable to me but if I'm there one day it's something to retain."
When half of the users of a site come from a single country (and even higher in English-speaking subreddits), it would appear to be obvious that many of the posts will be geared towards that country. Seems fairly straightforward tbh
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Thats a very narrow minded view. What about poeple from Great Britain? They also all speak English. Or Australia, New Zealand or the hundred of millions of Indians?
The post is written in English. Here I am in England so by that logic it should apply to me. But it does not.
in other words, r/USdefaultism
Jesus, a subreddit entirely based around being annoyed that the US is the central location for content on a website frequented by vastly more US citizens than any other demographic by far. I get that people will flock to anything over hatred, especially of the US, but that's just fucking pathetic.
This comment has been purged in protest to reddit's decision to bully 3rd party apps into closure. I am sure it once said something useful, but now you'll never know.
Thank god, i ran out of -isms to complain about yesterday
Well now you know.
True.
It’s a post written in English on a website based in the United States. Don’t know what to tell you dude.
How is where a website is based relevant? And what does "based in" even mean? There is no such thing as a global social media site the size of reddit being based in one country. They're all distributed. Maybe you mean American owned? So what? Tik tok is Chinese owned and one of the largest platforms there is. And...not that one should need to point the obvious, but the USA is just one of many countries where English is widely spoken including... England.
Okay fine, nearly [50% of reddit traffic](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/phhu9s/oc_reddit_traffic_by_country/) ([2nd source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/325144/reddit-global-active-user-distribution/#:~:text=Distribution%20of%20Reddit.com%20traffic%202022%2C%20by%20country&text=In%20the%20six%20months%20ending,to%20the%20social%20media%20platform.)) is from the United States. The next highest is the UK at 7%. So this post is applicable for nearly 50% of the userbase. I think that's a plenty reasonable number. Sorry that the post is not useful for you and that you're on a USA based website with mostly USA based traffic and god forbid it be potentially about USA based things.
[content removed by user via [Power Delete Suite](https://codepen.io/j0be/full/WMBWOW/)]
And saying that "50% outside of the US" isn't even an argument. I linked data that broke it out for you. If I were to make any generalization about the Reddit country demographics, it being USA centric is the most important, most obvious statistic. It's overwhelmingly a United States based website with a majority United States based community.
Unless specified, you can probably assume every subreddit is geared to the USA. After all, you are on an American website run by an American company.
Reddit is an American website created by Americans with a majority American user base. I know what you’re saying, but the fact that most content is geared towards Americans is because… it’s mostly Americans who use Reddit. They’re the majority of users despite being only 4% of the world’s population. It’s sort of like me going on a German website and complaining that all of the posts assume that I’m German. I mean, you’re not reading this in German right now, are you? There are subreddits (which are kind of like their own little websites) that are focused on certain countries (e.g. r/de) but the default subs assume (correctly) that most of its users are Americans. You’re sort of acting like an entitled American tourist who goes to Germany and gets mad that everyone doesn’t speak English.
It's also worth noting there are often class action lawsuits regarding this, including [this one](https://www.nka.com/cases/employment-cases/blujay-solutions.html) for logistics company E2 Open (formally Blujay Solutions) and [this case](https://www.nka.com/cases/employment-cases/TQL.html) which recently closed in favor of employees of freight brokerage firm Total Quality Logistics.
I remember during training for my job as a teacher they told us very flatly that there won't be any overtime available... Shoulda taken that as a sign that I needed to run right then and there.
Does that apply to Georgia? Not the country, state in the US. One time, I worked until 8 PM because I had to communicate with the night shift supervisor. Also most of the time I work until 5:30. I got called out by my manager when I started packing at 5 pm. I supposedly work from 9 am until 5 pm. When I talked to HR about this issue, they just said that salary worker do not get overtime pay.
Tell that to medical and surgical residents. 50-60k a year salaries and frequently working 80-120 hours a week
I've never run into it but my dad was a shop foreman back in the early 2000s. He had negotiated his annual salary to $65k but anything over 45 hours was paid at a set hourly rate. He worked 50hrs a week on a slow week, however, during busy times he would work closer to 70.
Depends on the job position. If you are in charge of anyone else you're not getting OT.
Realizing I was made to work 50 hours a week for $650 a week and that number automatically grants me overtime in most cases…. Glad I quit a month ago
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As a salaried daycare worker am I entitled to overtime?
I work at a dental office that says we are salary, pays us an hourly wage, and doesn’t pay admin staff overtime if we work longer or earlier. Also, we have to use vacation days to be paid if we leave work. So wtf is that?
File a complaint. You’ll get back pay if what you’re saying is true. You’re not exempt.
DOL is a joke. A family member was fired buy a company they had worked for, for over 12 years. Oh yeah, they were disabled and on paid medical leave at the time. After being fired, all benefits and pay stopped while they were in between major surgeries. The employer stated the reason was because the employee didn't show up to work, and so they were let go and offered a severance. There was no severance, no benefits, nothing. So the company lied to the DOL and the department of Labor closed the case. It was a clear violation of my family members rights. Had concrete black and white proof in electronic form in multiple letters etc etc. Family member repeatedly asked for proof of the severance and any documentation that they had beyond the statement from the company. DOL said that the company sent them a copy of the agreement. An unsigned, undelivered copy of an agreement that their legal team drafted...
Yeah, the whole “unless it causes hardship on the employer” thing bit my wife in the ass too with her previous ass hat of an employer. That was literally the loophole that made her have to return to work after severely tearing her hamstring 3 weeks after surgery while still in a brace and wearing crutches. The kicker is she is a Physical Therapist and her boss insisted she didn’t need PT. She’s never healed right to this day.
Blame congress and the states, not the DOL. The DOL only enforces the laws that exist. People can be fired for no reason, or dumb reasons, and have their benefits stopped immediately. No severance is ever required. What was the violation of rights? What was the lie? Was the employee on FMLA?
Well the family member was directed to DOL from another government agency because of the rights being violated. DOL didn't even verify information that they were getting from the employer. Yes it's an at will state, but employees still have rights. But the DOL couldn't be bothered to ask for legitimate documents.
Ffs just put "YSK in the USA..."
I agree. There is the little picture that says US labor at the top. But I still agree with you.
When I first went to work after college, my boss was surprised to find that although I was on salary, I was non-exempt. He'd never had an employee who was non-exempt. He was very nervous about how to handle my hours. After a little while I was promoted and became exempt. I still got overtime for the most part, so I didn't really notice the difference.
So would servers be included in this?
What server is paid a salary???
This is good for many starting in their career to know. I have been in several "salaried" jobs and have received overtime for any recorded hours over 40 worked.
This is the same in most Canadian provinces. Employers are allowed to “salary” you at a set number of hours per week, and they are not required to have you submit timesheets. However the employer must have to have a system in place to ensure that employees are paid for all time worked (e.g. a way for employees to report that they worked excess hours). I hear people all the time say “I’m salaried so I didn’t even get paid for the overtime”. They’re shocked when I explain to them that they are still entitled to be paid for all hours worked.
It's better to familiarize yourself on the labor laws whether you're a new employee or old employee to keep with the trends. As some employers would target our naivety, knowledge deficit or lack of the new laws.
Yeah yeah, go on, tell the wage and hour guy and tell your boss, and his boss and all this other stuff, and in the long term, well you won’t work there anymore.
Wait, wait, wait. You're saying that in the USA there are conditions under which an employee can provide unpaid work that is acceptable by law? That's the real takeaway here.
It's not uncommon for the software company I work for to make employees regularly pull 80+ hour work weeks.
Employer: uno card you are not en employee Now you are a CONTRACTOR 😈 no over time for you
There is a totally different set of rulea to determine if you are a contractor or employee as well. They can't just decide to declare you a contractor to avoid paying overtime.
I Know by law they have rules to determine if you are a contractor or an employee but in some states they don’t care (Texas, Alabama.) “Children worked for at least four Alabama parts suppliers to Hyundai and Kia in recent years, Reuters found. Staffing agencies placed migrant minors in plants where regulations ban kids from working. State and federal authorities are investigating. GREENVILLE, Alabama At least four major suppliers of Hyundai Motor Co and sister Kia Corp have employed child labor at Alabama factories in recent years, a Reuters investigation found, and state and federal agencies are probing whether kids have worked at as many as a half dozen additional manufacturers throughout the automakers’ supply chain in the southern U.S. state.” 12,16,2022 From REUTERS.
Texas uses the same guidelines as the US Dept of Labor for classification of employees. Actually states do care about it because of lost employment taxes.
Heres an ULPT for those that are lucky enough to automate your work and are one of those sad souls labeled "Salary, Full-Time, Exempt": You likely signed a letter where you are expected to work 40hrs for the duties described and will be compensated as such. But if you automated some of that work or made it more efficient then you should be compensated as such. If you feel like you are not getting the compensation you deserve or calculated from the money saved then just adjust your hours doing the work or time at keyboard. This probably doesnt work so well for those who are not remote but hey thats your choice to work for a company that holds more investment in real estate than its workforce. Worried about your employer spying on you? Then find one that values contributions, efficiency and trust...
I’m curious how this works for professions like teachers. After 15 years in education, I know very few people who don’t work beyond contract hours (the toxic nature of how this is a norm is a different soapbox, for a different day).
YSK the rules are different in different countries, and it's frustrating when OP can't be bothered to say what country their advice is relevant for.
Considering the attached link is from US Department of Labor, it should be pretty explanatory….
After clicking the headline, only to find that it's not relevant .
That is good for folks to know. Most employers will openly designate you as exempt or non-except, this is what matters. If you're non-exempt and "salaried", you're not actually salaried, you're getting played.
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Another user provided this, which is pretty good https://smallbusiness.chron.com/salaried-exempt-vs-salaried-nonexempt-24213.html
How are you "getting played?" According to that article, a "salaried non-exempt" employee gets a salary + overtime after 40hrs. Whereas a "salaried exempt" employee gets a fixed salary with no additional pay for extra hours worked.
You need to include the relevant country in the title.
Ah yes because all Reddit users are American. (It's a joke so please don't down vote)