Overtime Pay in Hard Economic Times
When economy turns slow as it has in the past year or so it affects issues related to employment law in many different and unique ways. One of the impacts we’ve observed is that employers begin to obscure the line between exempt and exempt employees in order to save on paying overtime wages. In California every hour worked over 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week has to be paid at the time and half rate. This rule however, only applies to employees who are entitled to receive overtime and are not exempt. When economy is bad employees may be willing to be put on a salary for the fear that they may lose their hours. The employer may then simply call the employee a “salaried” employee and pay him o her a flat amount each two weeks, even if the employee works more than 8 hours a day or 40 hours a week. However, if an employee who does not fit one of the exemptions, i.e. managerial, administrative, software, etc., then he or she may still be entitled to overtime for hours worked over 8 or 40 hours. Orange and Los Angeles overtime attorneys of Employment Law Team are currently working on many overtime cases in which employees were paid as salaried even though they did not qualify as exempt. If you have a question about this complicated area of law contact our wage and hour attorney.
