Overtime hours not paid

yankee49

We have had a reduction in force for the last two years in a row. One of our employees is now a department of one. Although we have cross trained one employee to take on one of her jobs, she insists she can do everything. However, she consistently works over 40 hours a week now even with the other employee taking care of the one job. Instead of getting paid for those hours, she "carries" them over to the next week. I think her manager decided it was OK to do this. I'm not up on all wage and hour laws, but I really feel uneasy about this. She is non-exempt. What do I do? Just what is the website for the Wage and Hour Board?

santire

You have good reason to feel uneasy. The Fair Labor Standards Act is very clear on this. It is based on a 40 hour work week. The need to pay for those extra hours over 40 at the premium rate of time and a half is the most important aspect of the entire Act. Any time worked over the 40 is payable at the premium rate. Those overtime hours cannot be carried over to the next week. The Federal Department of Labor has an excellent website. Go to [url]www.dol.gov[/url]. At that site you will see a tab to enter the wage and hour section. It has a wealth of data.

Shadowfax

If you are public sector emp/er (and I think you are) and you have a compt time policy, you can probably do this, although I'm not real clear how she is using the carry over hours.

moneyman

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 10-29-03 AT 07:20AM (CST)[/font][p]I am sure that I saw somewhere (but I can't remember where, sorry) that if the time was in the same pay period, it could be carried over BUT still needed to be calculated at the OT rate. In fact, a former employer instituted that policy because of the agreement that it was acceptable by current laws.


For instance in a bi-weekly pay period, working 41 hours in the first week would mean working 38.5 in the second week and then they would pay them a straight 80. I found that it was more a hassle to work with in trying to figure out how to mark time sheets and check that every was still averaging their 40 hour weeks. It was my opinion that we should just pay out the OT and show it and if they still wanted to work less hours in the following week, then let them (it worked out to the same money so why not show the correct hours as worked). If the company tried to use the accumulated numbers for some type of analysis, the OT wouldn't show up and how valuable would that be? If the company did not want to pay OT (which it didn't) then it really didn't make a difference if the paid it or let people comp it, it was still happening so the fact that we did not report a line item that said OT paid wasn't the real issue.

Shadowfax

Just to be clear, for most of us there is no such thing as an 80 hour opay period. The Act calls for anything over 40 in a 7 day period to b e paid at o/t rate. On another threat there was some mention of the 80, but that is a very limited circumstance and for very limited employers.