Unpaid Overtime Claims

Wage and Hour Disputes

Has your employer cheated you out of overtime or wages due for hours you have worked? If so, you may feel intimidated and helpless, as if there is nothing you can do to get paid for your time. You may be afraid of losing your job and worried that taking action will make it difficult or impossible to get another one. You do not have to work for free or for less than a fair wage. Federal law requires employers to pay you for all the hours you have worked and to compensate you appropriately for overtime.

The Fair Labor Standards Act, and many state laws protect workers from working unpaid hours and set standards for overtime wages. Overtime is any work performed in excess of 40 hours during one week. If your employer pays you by the hour, you are entitled to one and a half times your normal hourly rate for all hours in excess of 40 hours in one work-week. So, if you are normally paid $10 per hour and work a 45-hour week, you are entitled to $10 and hour for the first 40 hours and $15 an hour for the five hours of overtime, totaling $475 before taxes. If your employer tries to pay you $450 for 45-hour week at $10 an hour, you are being cheated out of overtime. That $25 may not seem like much, but after a few paychecks it adds up. Large companies, who make a practice of cheating employees out of overtime pay, stand to gain thousands or millions of dollars at the expense of their workers.

How do they get away with it?

Employers have many devious ways of avoiding overtime pay. Some resort to outright bullying, while others have devised complicated pay schedules to confuse employees. Both of these tactics, and others designed to cheat you out of pay for the hours you have worked, are against the law. Common tactics employers use to avoid paying overtime include:

• Forcing or intimidating you into working off the clock
• Refusing to pay for "unapproved" hours
• Carrying overtime hours over into the next week's hours
• Automatically deducting hours for lunch and breaks even if you worked during that time period
• Requiring you to perform tasks before clocking in or after clocking out as preparation, clean up, or shut down activities
• Refusing to pay for short breaks (less than 30 minutes) or combining the time taken in short breaks to total 30 minutes or more
• Falsifying time sheets
• Misclassifying you as exempt from overtime
• Flat out issuing a check paying your overtime hours at your regular wage and hoping you will let it slide

Salaried employees are eligible for overtime

You may mistakenly believe that you are automatically exempt from overtime if you are paid a salary rather than an hourly wage. This is not the case. Some salaried employees are exempt from overtime, but not all. There are strict rules and tests that determine if a salaried employee is entitled to overtime pay. Unpaid overtime claims for salaried employees are more complicated than those for workers paid an hourly wage, but you may still be entitled to compensation.

Ultimately, when an employer fails or refuses to pay overtime he or she is stealing from you and your family - stealing your time and your money, often equating to food from your table or much needed healthcare for your children. If you are working overtime and not receiving fair pay, you are probably already short on cash, and feel that you cannot afford to fight your employer in court. Don't worry. Most attorneys handle these types of cases on a contingency basis, meaning that you do not have to pay up front and that if you don't get paid your attorney doesn't either.

More questions? Click here to read our Frequently Asked Questions about Unpaid Overtime page.

If you have been denied or cheated out of overtime pay, contact an experienced overtime wage law attorney today.