overtime wages

Home Health Care Staffing Agency Misclassifies Employees As Independent Contractors

Published on: May 9, 2022 | by Martin & Martin, LLP

Untitled-design-2-232x300 One of the biggest aspects of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) that employers continue to violate is misclassifying workers as independent contractors rather than employees. Employers receive massive benefits by misclassifying workers as independent contractors, including not having to offer health insurance or pay minimum or overtime wages. However, the determination of whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor is not up to the whim of the employer. While that determination, at times, is complex. Most of the time, it is as simple as whether the worker regularly works for the company and is bound by the company’s rules and policies. If so, they are employees — not independent contractors. And, as employee’s they have rights under the FLSA, including the right to minimum wage and overtime for all hours over forty (40) hours in a workweek.

One example of types of companies who routinely misclassify workers is the home health care industry. On March 14, 2022, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced a consent judgment against a home health care agency when it misclassified some of its home health care workers as independent contractors and paid the workers straight time for all hours of work meaning the workers did not receive time and one-half for overtime hours. The DOL also found that the agency did not include on-call earnings in the computation of overtime rates of pay for the workers it did pay overtime meaning the agency was paying a lower rate of overtime.

The DOL noted the significant need for essential home health care workers during the pandemic and said that “[h]ome care workers continue to deliver critical services on the pandemic’s frontlines. These workers provide people with vital assistance and help them meet basic daily needs. Without these services, many would not be able to live at home.”

Am I Even a Hourly Worker (Non-Exempt)? Or am I Exempt?

Published on: November 5, 2019 | by Martin & Martin, LLP

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that both private and federal employers in the United States pay hourly (non-exempt) workers overtime at a minimum of 1.5x’s the normal hourly rate for any hours past forty hours in a workweek.

Now that you know what consists of a workweek and how you accrue overtime, you may be ready to pick up some extra hours to pay for some extras during the holiday season. Hold that thought. There are types of workers who are exempted from the overtime requirement. Those workers are generally salaried and make at least $684 a week (as of September 24, 2019). Those people are:

Administrative Employees:

I’ve had Wages Withheld. What Now?

Published on: November 1, 2019 | by Martin & Martin, LLP

Now that we’ve established the general mechanics of how you accrue overtime, you might have gone back to look at your previous paystubs and noticed that you haven’t been paid the overtime that you were due as an hourly worker. The Fair Labor Standards Act and subsequent legal precedent accounted for such circumstances where employers withhold wages that hourly employees rightfully earned, and you can’t be fired for taking the steps to remedy your situation. Your options include:

Talk to your employer: This may seem like an obvious answer, but the first thing you should do if you think overtime wages have been withheld from you is to talk to your employer to make sure it wasn’t a mistake that they’d be inclined to resolve without outside intervention.
File a Complaint with an Administrative Agency: So talking to your employer didn’t work out. The next step is to file a complaint with some administrative agency (Ie. The Department of Labor or its equivalent in your State). Most agencies require a written complaint, after which they’ll start an investigation to figure out if overtime rules were violated and seek a remedy on the behalf of both the employee and the employer. Generally, you’ll receive back pay for any withheld wages, however….

How Do You Accrue Overtime in a Workweek?

Published on: October 28, 2019 | by Martin & Martin, LLP

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Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

With the holidays around the corner, many hourly workers are thinking about picking up extra shifts to supplement their normal income to pay for the festivities of the holiday season. Before you do that, especially if you’re a part-time worker, here’s how those hours in a workweek work.

The Fair Labor Standards Act requires that both private and federal employers in the United States pay hourly workers overtime at a minimum of 1.5x’s the normal hourly rate for any hours worked past forty in a workweek. While that workweek does have to have seven days, it does not have to match up to the standard Calendar week. For purposes of knowing if you, as an hourly worker, are supposed to receive overtime, it is important to know from what days your job’s workweek runs.

The Fair Labor Standards Act: What is it and Why does it Matter to You?

Published on: October 14, 2019 | by Martin & Martin, LLP

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulates the labor practices of both private and federal employers in the United States. It was enacted to ensure that U.S. employers kept a fair and safe work environment for employees.

Included in this act are the bare minimum requirements for how employers must pay their employees. Those requirements include overtime pay for employees who have worked more than forty hours in a workweek.

The FLSA requires that hourly workers be paid overtime of, at minimum, 1.5x’s the normal hourly rate of their job. That means that even if you’re a minimum-wage worker ($7.25 per hour at the time of this writing), you’re entitled to at least 1.5x’s that rate ($10.875) for every hour that you work over forty hours.