Determining Overtime Compensation for Employees Who Work in Multiple Locations

Some employees work at the same location, performing the same role every day. A lot of workers, however, do not. They may work for their employer in multiple locations and perform various roles. Employees in this latter category may be at an exceptionally high risk of suffering the harm of unpaid overtime compensation. When you work in different locations or perform different roles, it may be easier for your employer to fail to credit you for all your hours during a workweek and fail to pay overtime even though your total hours exceed 40. If you believe that your employer has illegally underpaid you in this (or any) manner, you owe it to yourself to contact an experienced Atlanta wage and hour lawyer and discuss your circumstances.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division (WHD) recovered more than $145,000 in unpaid overtime compensation in a case that involved employees whose workweeks included duties at multiple locations.

After an investigation, the division concluded that the employer, which owned three Choice Hotels establishments in Helen, Georgia, engaged in misconduct that wrongfully denied overtime pay to nearly 100 of its housekeeping and front desk employees.

Specifically, when an employee worked at two or more hotels during a single work week, the employer did not combine those hours to assess and determine overtime. This resulted in employees working more than 40 hours in a workweek but only receiving straight-time compensation for all those hours on multiple occasions.

The hotelier in Northeast Georgia was not the only employer recently caught engaging in this illegal practice. A day earlier, the division announced the results of its investigation against a Minneapolis pizza chain. Like the Georgia hotel case, the Minnesota matter involved an employer who failed to combine hours when employees worked at two or more of the chain’s four eateries within a single workweek. This resulted in some employees working more than 40 hours in a week but receiving no time-and-a-half overtime pay.

As the division’s Atlanta district director explained, “Employers that operate more than one location cannot treat each location as a separate job. The hours for an employee who works at multiple locations during a workweek must be combined and overtime must be paid for hours over 40 in a workweek.”

Employers need to be especially mindful and proceed carefully when, inside one workweek, an employee works in two different capacities at two distinct regular pay rates. If that employee’s total hours (across all roles in all locations) exceeds 40 hours in a workweek, the employee is entitled to time-and-a-half overtime compensation. To ascertain the employee’s overtime compensation, the employer must calculate a singular regular rate-of-pay figure for that worker. This scenario would, for example, include an employee who works as both a server (earning a cash wage and tips) and a host/hostess (earning a higher cash wage with no earnings from tips.)

As the WHD highlighted in 2021, it might also include a restaurant employee who splits time serving tables (earning cash wages and tips) and tending bar (earning a flat sum per shift.) Straight-time wages in that situation, according to the WHD, would be the sum of the employee’s bartending compensation plus $7.25 ($2.13 cash wages + $5.12 tip credit) times the number of hours spent serving. The employee’s regular rate of pay would be that amount divided by the total number of hours worked across both serving and bartending.

Issues of unpaid overtime can be complicated, nuanced, and involve intricate details. For reliable advice and effective advocacy, look to the knowledgeable Atlanta wage and hour attorneys at the law firm of Parks, Chesin & Walbert. Contact us through this website or at 404-873-8048 to schedule a consultation today.

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