In one word, yes. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) is a federal law that covers issues such as hours of work and pay. While your employer can fire you for not working overtime, they must pay you overtime wages (1.5 times your hourly rate) for every hour worked over 40 hours a week. If you didn’t catch that, the critical point is “every hour worked over 40 hours a week.” That means that your employer could hypothetically schedule you for 13 hour days 3 days a week, adding up to a grand total of 39 hours a week, low enough to not have to pay you overtime rates. If you’re stuck in that situation, quit and getting a cooler boss.
Do I have to Work Overtime?
January 18th, 2008 | Workplace
3 comments ↓
What about if you are exempt as, for example, most engineers, scientists and managers are? Are you forgetting that?
Oh and here is the link defining who is exempt: http://www.ewin.com/articles/exneot.htm
I am surprised that a lawyer writing the law blog doesn’t know that some people are “exempt”. (And are actually happy about it – the flip side of being “exempt” is being able to take time off for “personal business” and still get paid…) So I’d be mad as hell if some lawyers decided that I should work by the our.
- An engineer
Here’s a good article detailing the differences:
http://www.thehonestdollar.com/2008/02/03/exempt-nonexempt-overtime/
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