Employers Stiffing Employees on Overtime

Las Vegas, NVYou work as hard as you can to make money because you have bills to pay. When the opportunity to work overtime presents itself you jump at the chance. After all, the overtime pay helps you to pay your bills more quickly. So, why not work the extra hours and rake in the money?

Except that not all employers pay their employees properly. Some are very subtle about it—they ask employees to stay an extra few minutes "off the clock" to help out while things are busy. Others are less subtle—they require their employees to work many extra hours in a week and specifically tell them not to report the overtime hours, or they tell the employees it is a requirement of the job that they work extra hours without pay. Still others play to the employee's guilt, saying that they would like to pay overtime but just cannot afford it yet—but they promise that the employee will be rewarded for his loyalty.

Of course, the employee is rarely rewarded for that loyalty. More often than not, he works those long hours and his company benefits by not having to pay him for the overtime. When he complains to management about this—after having gone months or even years without proper pay—he is told that he will be fired if he continues to make noise. So he continues to work and continues to go unpaid for his overtime.

It may seem like these sorts of employment problems are a thing of the past, but employees endure this abuse every day. Many are starting to fight back by filing lawsuits against their employers, but for every employee who fights the system there are thousands who bear this burden in silence, afraid that if they speak up they will lose their job.

Some people work many more than 40 hours in a week. Ron H (not his real name) says that in his seasonal job, he worked up to 60 hours a week, 7 days a week, without overtime pay. "…from June to mid-August I would work 7 days a week and get anywhere from 100 to 145 hours every 2 weeks, but I never got paid over time. In those summer months I would rarely ever see even 5 days off [in total] through those 2 months."

There are employers who try to avoid paying for overtime by declaring their workers are exempt from such pay. Frank C (not his real name) says his employer did that to him. "I work 66 hours a week on average and do not receive any overtime. My employers say they are exempt from paying overtime because we are farm workers. My job does not match up with the legal definition of 'farm worker' under the exemption."

Some overtime regulations can be complex, which is why not every overtime complaint is cut and dried. However, the truth is that there are many employees out there who work hard and put in long hours without being properly paid for those hours. Those employees deserve their overtime pay. Employers should not be allowed to profit by making employees work long hours without compensation. What these employers may not realize is that the courts are frequently siding with exploited workers.