Posted on 11/18/2016 12:42:28 PM PST by rey
Can your salary legally work out to less than minimum wage relative to the number of hours you work?
Look up FLSA
There is exempt salaried, and hourly.
Exempt means agent of the company in most cases, and non-exempt hourly means “the help”.
I don’t mean the the help as a perjorative just a statement of status within the structure
As the owner of a small business that can happen frequently. In fact, salary for an entrepreneur is often negative for some time.
If I say that I’ll give you $25.00 dollars to do a job, and you hem haw around for five hours. That turns out to $5.00 dollars an hour. If you get the job done in an hour and a half, well that’s over $16.00 dollars an hour. which is over twice the minimum wage.
Yes, Trump is going to be working for a dollar a year.
If you work for the military as an enlisted man, aboard ship or deployed, working for below minimum wage is almost a guarantee.
If you are salaried, you bet it can. If your company is demanding with the overtime but stingy with comp time, quit now before they work you to death.
Too many businesses today screw up everything they touch and then rely on a handful of martyrs to fix the mistakes at the last minute through herculean efforts that are rarely rewarded. Then, since that worked once, it becomes the standard.
Unless you’re in a life-critical profession, every hour you work over 40 should earn you a comp hour. Unless you’re willing to give your time away.
I worked for a man once who had ABSOLUTELY no math skill.
I was making an hourly wage, paid every two weeks.
He decided to ‘promote’ me to salary and instructed his accountant to pay me once a month at the rate of two paychecks.
Of course my wage went down - there being 26 2-week pay periods a year and he was now only paying me 24 2-week pay periods.
I literally spent 30 minutes explaining the calendar/week/and math of the thing and he did not understand it at all.
The accountant straightened it out the next pay period (after I called her).
Soon after I left that job and never looked back.
I generally worked way more than 40 hours per week most of my career... sometimes I would have to travel to places like Europe, Argentina, Mexico City, etc... long trips to go do one task or the other... lots of my own time involved.
I was almost always "on call" 24X7 as well... especially holidays.
I had a job once where I had a salary, and 11 incentives which would each pay out approx. 20% of my salary. I achieved all 11 incentives ... and by the end of the year, the actual amount paid me was 10% less than my base. In short, my employer bounced a significant number of checks to me. I left shortly thereafter for a position with the company that he was a vendor for, and fired him as a vendor.
Nice storybook ending!
Unless Trump/Congress reascends Obama’s EO, salaried employees earning less than $47,476 will earn overtime pay starting Dec 1. The current amount is $23,660. This might explain why you or someone you know are getting worked to death right now..
Look up the pay scale vs. the hours worked of most of the Army enlisted personnel.
Yes. I was a victim of it when I was technical director for an ISP in the 90s. Last salary job I took.
You must have worked for General Physics Corporation. They expected 60-80 hours per week for salaried employees. God forbid you didn’t reply to an e-mail you received at 11pm and every Friday we heard “it’s in your best interest to come in this Saturday and Sunday”.
And when I complained, I was told that I was subject to their rules any time of the day or night. So I told them that since I was working three shifts every work day, plus six additional shifts every weekend, I needed at least four times the money I was getting. They quoted the old "you're a professional, and this is not a 9-to-5 job" schtick. I told them that I worked for money, not love, so either they paid me or traded me.
They fired me.
I moved and got a job at 1/3 more pay and no on-call or overtime. I now make almost 3 times what they were paying me. And I swore I'd never take another job that said anything about "off-hours support."
I was hoping they would fire me, so in 2005 I moved on to a great company named Alutiiq on another government counter terrorism contract, tripled my salary by going from salaried to hourly. I would hit 40 hours Wednesday afternoon and the rest was time and a half, double time on the weekends.
Without knowing all the facts, the short answer is yes.
That is IF your job is correctly classified as Exempt under FSLA (exempt from overtime – i.e. salaried) and your salary is at least $455 per week/ $23,660 per year ($913 per week/ $47,476 per year beginning December 1st), you are to be paid your salary regardless of the number of actual hours worked during that week.
https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/fs17a_overview.pdf
If correctly classified as Exempt, the employer does not have to additionally compensate you or pay at time and a half for hours worked over 40 (although the FSLA doesn’t prohibit it either), however they also cannot make deductions from your salary if you work less than 40 hours in any week or for less than full day absences except under certain exceptions (they may require you to use your leave time bank for certain types of absences); a good explanation can be found here:
http://www.hrmorning.com/docking-pay-exempt-employees/
Per the DOL: An employer must pay an exempt employee the full predetermined salary amount “free and clear” for any week in which the employee performs any work without regard to the number of days or hours worked. However, there is no requirement that the predetermined salary be paid if the employee performs no work for an entire workweek. Deductions may not be made from the employee’s predetermined salary for absences occasioned by the employer or by the operating requirements of the business (that would be such as when the business is closed for a Holiday or for bad weather, for a mechanical breakdown, power outage, etc.). If the employee is ready, willing, and able to work, deductions may not be made for time when work is not available. Salary deductions are generally not permissible if the employee works less than a full day. Except for certain limited exceptions found in 29 C.F.R. 541.602(b)(1)-(7) , salary deductions result in loss of the section 13(a)(1) exemption.
If you are currently being paid the minimum salary allowed under the Exempt classification of $455 per week, you would have to have worked 63 hours or more in order for your imputed hourly rate to have fallen below the federal minimum wage of $7.25. But again the minimum weekly salary allowed for salaried Exempt employees goes up to $913 per week beginning December 1st. If you are paid less than $913 per week in salary, then from that point forward, regardless of whether your job meets one of the Exempt categories, you must be paid on a non-exempt (hourly) basis and paid overtime.
If you believe that your job does not meet one of the Exempt classifications under FSLA, you “could” be entitled to back overtime pay. Keep in mind that the exemption is not based on the job title, but on actual job duties; amount of direct supervision received, level of material decision making and other key factors as outlined by the DOL.
I would caution however to research first, then approach your employer and or their HR department, and professionally and respectfully request they review your job description for adherence to the FSLA as far as meeting one of the Exempt categories. If you get no satisfaction, you can contact the Department of Labor.
Contrary to what some have stated, for an Exempt salaried employee there is no legal requirement for your employer to give you “comp time” for hours worked over 40. It is an unusual practice in the private sector and illegal for non-exempt employees except for those working in the public sector. In my experience however, many employers give Exempt salaried employees some flexibility as to comping out some time after having worked an unusual amount of hours as may have been needed for a special project, a seasonal or temporary high volume workload, covering for another employee in their absence or for uncompensated out of state or out of country travel time, but they are not legally required to do so.
If you are regularly working more than 40 hours per week and such that your imputed hourly rate is falling below the minimum hourly wage on a regular basis, you may want to research if you are being underpaid based on your job description and local wage compensation rates for the same job. There are some websites where you can find this out. If the employer is way understaffed and has no plans on hiring additional people and the amount of hours you are working on a regular basis is unreasonable to you, then you may want to consider searching for another job.
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