New York Lawyers Recover Overtime Wages Owed to Employees Misclassified as Being Exempt from Overtime Pay

Legal protection to salaried employees that are legally entitled to overtime

Businesses have been trying to devise ways around the overtime wage laws since their enactment several decades ago. In the last few years, businesses have begun converting hourly employees to salary to avoid having to pay time and a half for any overtime work. The lawyers at Hepworth, Gershbaum & Roth, PLLC in New York fight against these businesses that go out of their way to misclassify employees and pay less than the fair wages they deserve. We are compassionate to the struggle of employees working hard for a company that is taking advantage of them.

Which employees may be misclassified as exempt from overtime but are entitled to hourly pay?

The federal wage law makes distinctions between employees that can be paid a salary and those that must be paid hourly. One of the main categories that allows for a salary compensation are people that perform managerial duties.  These salaried employees in managerial positions are generally ineligible for overtime pay.  However, workers that perform hands-on tasks or labor are hourly employees which must be paid time and a half for any hours worked more than 40 hours in a week even though they have a title such as assistant manager or Co-manager.  Companies are now trying to misclassify employees as management so as to avoid paying the overtime wages required under both State and federal wage law. Speak with a New York misclassified employee lawyer if you think you are entitled to overtime pay, but your employer switched you to salary wages.

Which tasks are not considered managerial for the purposes of classifying employee compensation?

What you do at your job is the determining factor for whether your employer must pay overtime. The job title and official job description of an employee do not matter, rather it is the work you do on a daily basis along with the managerial duties that determine if you are able to be paid a flat salary and not hourly . Retailers have been some of the worst offenders of misclassifying employees as management. They label workers as assistant managers or department managers, but in actuality they rarely perform any actual managerial tasks. Our experienced New York City employee misclassification employees have had a great success rate of recovery for clients because of our ability to demonstrate the differences between managerial and hourly work. The types of tasks that are not considered managerial include:

• Stocking shelves / replenishing

• Placing prices on item / changing prices on items

• Unloading trucks

• Setting up the store

• Putting away inventory

• Working registers

• Cleaning

• Working in the stock room

• Creating planograms

Contact a New York overtime wages recovery attorney today for a free initial consultation to discuss whether your position has been misclassified

Our attorneys can help, even if you are a salaried manager that has been misclassified as an employee that is ineligible for overtime wages. At Hepworth, Gershbaum & Roth, PLLC, we have been very successful at proving before courts in New York and nationally that our clients have been unjustly withheld from receiving overtime wages. For a free initial consultation, contact us online or by phone at 212-545-1199.