If you are a salaried employee, how do you know if you are entitled to overtime? It depends on a number of factors, including your job duties and rate of pay.
A settlement was recently announced between Wal-Mart and the US Department of Labor to address federal and Missouri minimum wage law violations. This agreement will pay $33 million to almost 87,000 employees. These employees are located in Missouri and across the nation.
This settlement addresses the main issue of how salaried interns, trainees, managers, and programmer trainees were paid by Wal-Mart. Although these employees were salaried, federal law states that they still may be entitled to overtime payments. According to the US Department of Labor, Wal-Mart employees who had to work long hours but were paid little money were actually “non-exempt salaried.” What this means is that these employees, although salaried, were still entitled to overtime compensation.
The settlement of federal and Missouri minimum wage law violations concerns how Wal-Mart paid certain employees, including interns, trainees, managers, and programmer trainees who were salaried employees. These employees often worked long hours for very little money. Federal law requires that workers who are considered salaried may still be eligible for overtime payments.
Whether they are eligible depends on the duties of their jobs. In some cases, employees are actually “non-exempt salaried” workers and therefore can receive overtime.
The case against Wal-Mart related to employees who had limited power to make decisions, had no employees to supervise, and yet still worked long hours. In some cases, the salaries of these employees were much less that $23,660.
Employees often think that salaried workers cannot receive overtime, but that is not true. The way the guidelines work is that if an employee is paid $23,660 a year or less, they should be paid overtime for work they do beyond 40 hours a week. Under these guidelines, employees earning less than $455 a week can receive overtime.
