Yes, according to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), emergency medical service (EMS) workers are entitled to overtime pay. Overtime wages should equal one and one-half times their regular rate of pay. Emergency Medical Service (EMS) workers often work far more than 40 hours in a workweek, but many of them are not paid overtime […]
The difficulty here is not that independent contractors should be getting overtime pay for excessive hours they might put in on a project – they do not get overtime pay, regardless of how many hours they work, since independent contractors are not “employees” and are thus not covered under the FLSA. Rather, the problem occurs […]
Compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay is something that governmental employers may use, but private sector employers may not make use of compensatory time. Private employers may use an informal variety of compensatory time by adjusting the schedule within the same workweek to ensure that total hours worked do not exceed 40. However, […]
There is no such thing as “voluntary unpaid overtime” or “donated” time under the FLSA. Any manager who expects or allows his or her staff to put in unrecorded work time, otherwise known as working “off the clock”, is a wage claim or lawsuit waiting to happen. It is simply impossible under the FLSA for […]
Some employers make the mistake of assuming that simply because an employee is paid a salary, or is called “salaried” or “exempt”, or has a high-ranking job title, the employee will be considered exempt from overtime pay. Few things could be further from the truth. Many non-exempt employees are paid a salary, such as receptionists, […]
Some employers assume that because their business is small, they are not covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Unlike most other state and federal employment laws, the FLSA does not depend directly upon the number of employees. The FLSA covers individual employees whose work affects interstate commerce, or it can apply to all […]