Availing Legal Expertise to Get Respite from Firms Denying Overtime Compensation

02:44 Employment Attorneys , Employment Law Cases 0 Comments

Employment attorneys foresee an increase in overtime litigation cases, contingent upon passage of a law that would entitle more salaried Americans to receive overtime pay. The Obama administration advocates an expansion of the right to collect overtime and aims to grant overtime eligibility to a greater number of white-collar professionals. In June 2015, the Labor Department suggested increasing the stipulated minimum annual salary Americans must earn before they are deemed ineligible to collect overtime. If a law is passed to raise this “cut-off” salary from $23,660 to $50,440, approximately 5 million Americans now unable to receive overtime would qualify to receive payment.

The rise in overtime litigation will be further affected by a pending court case that could determine that after-hours use of smartphones for job-related matters is legitimate overtime work and must be duly compensated. Advances in telecommunications make it easy to engage an employee any time, and the boundary between work and home becomes blurred. Constantly inundated with work-related calls and emails when off-duty, a Chicago-based police sergeant ultimately filed a class-action lawsuit against the city in 2010 for failure to pay overtime. The sergeant and an additional 50 co-workers claimed that they are entitled to receive overtime pay corresponding to time devoted to receiving and responding to messages on their smartphones when they were off-duty.  

Initially, the sergeant did not object to addressing work-related issues on his smartphone after-hours because he believed that the demands of the position required this extra effort, asserting that he viewed it as “part of the job.” He was motivated to maintain constant availability by the incentive of attaining a promotion. However, the sergeant became disenchanted with his employer, who allegedly overlooked him when it came time for promotions. After analyzing the sergeant’s phone records, his attorneys concluded that, in the span of 28 consecutive days, he spent a cumulative total of 12 hours for work-related calls, using his BlackBerry during free time. Instead of receiving a promotion, the sergeant was allegedly demoted from his position in the police department’s Bureau of Organized Crime to a lower-ranking district job, and he was thus denied an opportunity for growth and advancement within the organization. 

O’Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble has significant experience handling employment law cases involving failure to pay overtime claims. According to New Jersey law, a very limited range of employees is barred from receiving overtime pay, such as executives, outside sales representatives, hotel employees, limousine drivers, farm workers and those who assist in the rearing of livestock. If your job differs from these specific categories, you are most likely eligible to receive overtime pay, and your employer cannot obligate you to perform your job duties without receiving the wages that you are rightfully owed. Unfortunately, employers occasionally try to evade labor and employment laws and rob employees of overtime. For example, an employer might change the title of your position and claim that you are consequently ineligible to receive overtime. If your position is labelled differently but you still fulfill the same job functions and perform essentially the same tasks that your previous job entailed beforehand, you still have a right to seek overtime. In a similar manner, employers may strategically assign you a position that belongs to a category exempt from overtime although the duties you actually perform correspond to a different category that deserves overtime. When calculating salaries, employers might also wrongfully deduct time allocated for preparation at the beginning of the workday and time spent cleaning up before you clock out and leave the premises. If you believe that your employer has violated the law by unjustly denying you overtime, O’Connor, Parsons, Lane & Noble can help you recover the unpaid wages that you deserve.

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