Atlanta Employment Attorneys Blog
Violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act — in the form of unpaid overtime — occur frequently. Some of them may be an employer’s good-faith mistake in the calculation of a worker’s overtime hours, or they may be more nefarious things like intentionally misclassifying workers or forcing workers to work “off the clock.” Either way, it is against the law and, if you are a worker harmed as a result of unpaid overtime, you have the right to take action and should get in touch with an experienced Atlanta unpaid overtime lawyer right away to find out more about the legal options that exist for you.
A business in Georgia and South Carolina was one of those entities that the federal government recently caught violating the FLSA. The business, a tire and auto repair shop, had three locations in Georgia (Pooler, Darien, and Dublin) and two in South Carolina.
There were actually multiple ways that the shop violated federal overtime laws, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. For one thing, the shop required employees to complete after-hours service calls but, when it came to calculating those workers’ overtime pay, the employer did not properly factor in those after-hours service calls.
The employer also failed to properly account for “certain commission payments” into the overtime pay calculations of its tire technicians and sales workers. The failure to include those commissions resulted in the shop paying “workers lower overtime rates than required by law.”
The employer’s overtime calculation errors affected 72 workers across the shop’s five locations, amounting to a total of more than $79,500 in back wages.
Overtime Law Violations Can Take Many Forms
The sort of errors this tire shop made are not the only ways that an employer can illegally deprive a worker of overtime pay. One common way it happens takes place when an employer classifies a worker as “exempt” when he/she really is “non-exempt.” Exempt workers are salaried workers who are ineligible for overtime pay, while almost all other workers are entitled to receive overtime compensation. A lot of times, the sort of employees who count as “exempt” have jobs that are salaried and entail doing at least some managerial or supervisory work.
Another way that an overtime violation can occur is if you’re classified as an independent contractor when the nature of your work indicates that you really should have been classified as an employee. That can make a big difference because independent contractors’ work is not covered by the minimum wage and overtime rules of the FLSA, and those workers have no legal right to demand minimum wage or overtime pay.
Other types of overtime violations can be much more blatant. They can include things like forcing you to work off the clock so that your hours do not exceed 40 in a week, not paying you for the time you’re required to be “on-call,” not paying you for your prep time, clean-up time, and downtime on the job, or not paying the proper time-and-a-half rate for your overtime hours.
Whether you’re a worker whose employer has deprived you of overtime pay, or you’re an employer seeking to ensure that your pay practices are fully compliant with the law, it pays to have a knowledgeable legal team on your side. Reach out to the Atlanta unpaid overtime attorneys at the law firm of Parks, Chesin & Walbert to get the legal help you need. We’ve helped countless workers and businesses just like you, are we’re equipped and ready to provide you with the effective advice and advocacy you deserve. Contact us through this website or at 404-873-8048 to schedule a consultation today.