Employers Must Pay For All Time Worked, Including Off The Clock

In these difficult economic times, workers feel lucky just to have a job. At the same time, many companies are facing intense pressures to cut costs — and employee salaries are a big component of their costs. Unfortunately, some employers take unfair advantage of their employees by making them work "off the clock" and then do not pay them for their time spent off the clock. This can happen in a variety of ways.

Sometimes the employer will make the employee work for a period of time before he is allowed to clock in for the day; or else, the employer may require him to clock out and continue working after that. Or, the employer may make the worker work through lunch or other breaks. And, in our high-tech society, some employers make their workers check and respond to e-mails and text messages at all hours of the day or night. Bottom line — the employee is doing work and not getting paid for that work.

By making their workers work off the clock, the employers also save considerably on overtime pay — which kicks in for hourly workers afer 40 hours of work in a week under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), and requires the employer to pay "time and a half". According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 85% of the work force is protected by the FSLA overtime rules. so employers have a great incentive to keep workers from recording enough hours to hit the orertime milestone. Other tactics some employers use to cheat their employees of their pay include, "rounding" the starting or ending tmes of employment for a shift to the nearest half hour or 15 minutes. (Insignificant rounding up to the nearest 15 minutes, however, is generally permitted under federal and state regulations so long as it is implemented in a manner that overtime will compensate employees for all the time they have actually worked — i.e., sometimes the employer rounds up and sometimes the employer rounds down).

Another strategy of employers is to wrongly classify hourly employees as professional, executive, or administrative. These categories are exempt from the overtime rules, and by improperly classifying workers, an employer can avoid paying them overtime.

If you feel that your employer has denied you pay based on one of these strategies or through similar tactics, please contact us to discuss your legal rights.

matthew simmons

i work for big appel begeals she make us enpolys work of the cloack unpaid meeting and makes cloack out and make us do stuff that we might have for got off the cloack what can i do about that what is my right please.
Clifford Montero

Can an employer sends work related correspondence to an employees personal email address, which they are not permitted to access while at work. My specific example is hourly employees being emailed work related things such as lists and documents and being required to respond to and print these documents when no electronic device is provided to do this work while on the clock at work. Employees must access these email accounts via their personal computers and cell phones while these devices are prohibited from being used at work.
Kyle slaugh

I work for six flags incorporated in Vallejo, ca. They claim me and about 3000 other employees as seasonal. Every week they give out the next week’s schedule and require their employees to not only be here at their scheduled time, but get to their location and be ready to go by the time they are on the clock, which can take anywhere from 5-30 min depending on there location and task for the day. Just recently they have started requiring the employees to clock out and get their time out, and then verify their break times and sign their time sheet when they are “off the clock”. Also, they laid me off for less than a week this previous year before re-hiring me and I am still considered seasonal to them, and they write me down as “seasonal”. My question is, would I have a class action lawsuit from these violations, and what evidence would I need to file one?
Ashley

I work at a hotel that is a franchise but privately owned. I work 8 hour days but I cannot leave until the person relieving me has counted the front and back drawer which can take 10-20 minutes each day. I am only paid for the 8 hours I don’t get paid for working if my relief is 5 minutes late then takes 10 minutes to count the drawers is this illegal?