Wage and Hour Claims
North Carolina and South Carolina have statutes which protect employee’s pay. In addition, the federal government enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act ( FLSA ) to protect workers against violations of their rights to minimum wage and overtime pay. The FLSA also requires employers to keep accurate records of the time employees work as well as the wages paid to employees. Under the FLSA, workers who question or complain about their wages are protected from retaliation by their employer.
If you believe you have not been paid correctly by your employer, the Law Offices of Jason E. Taylor is available to help you recover what is owed to you.
Common Violations of the Wage and Hour Laws
- Forcing employees to work off the clock
- Forcing employees to work from home, or answer texts and calls at home and not paying employees for the time it takes answering the call or reading and responding to the text
- Failing to pay time and one half for all overtime hours worked over 40 in a work week.
- Forcing employees to accept comp-time instead of being paid overtime.
Even if You are Paid a Salary You may be Entitled to Overtime
Many employers tell employees they are salaried and not entitled to get paid overtime. Employees need to be aware that the exemptions to the overtime laws are very narrow. Employers frequently abuse the FLSA overtime exemptions and misclassify employees as exempt from overtime. Common overtime violations include:
- Working foreman: Many employees are assigned a team or work crew and given the title “supervisor” or “foreman” and get paid a flat salary each week but even these employees may be entitled to overtime pay if the foreman spends the majority of their day working with their hands doing the same work as their crew.
- Managers and Assistant Managers: Many managers and assistant managers in chain retail stores or restaurants do not have as their primary duty the management of the business. These “so-called mangers” work 50- and 60-hour weeks without overtime pay; because their stores are small these so-called managers work many hours alone, opening and closing the stores.
- Administrative assistants: Simply working in an office environment, being paid a salary and completing paperwork does not make you an exempt administrative employee.
- Computer technicians: Many employers treat employees who work with computers as exempt from overtime pay. However, employees who deal with the repair of computer equipment or hardware, or simply depend on a computer to do their job, are not exempt and must be paid overtime. To be exempt the employee’s primary duty must include software engineering or systems analysis.
Independent Contractor Abuse
A common abuse in the workplace is the growing trend to misclassify employees as independent contractors. Employers do this to deny workers overtime wages, deny workers insurance and other benefit coverage and shift the burden of paying state and federal employment taxes onto their workers. There are strict tests that must be satisfied to treat someone as an independent contractor. If you are classified as an independent contractor but you go to work every day to the same site of employment, your boss provides all your tools or supplies, dictates and directs every aspect of how you perform your work, and you work long hours, you could be misclassified and be entitled to overtime compensation.
