Every day he went to work was another trip to the land of misery. Now don’t get me wrong, I liked what I did and I was really good at it. The problem was the constant abuse and belittling attitude of my supervisor and the owner of the company. As a manager, I was also required to clock in and out of work every day. He was supposed to be there at 7am and couldn’t leave the building until after 5pm, this also included Saturdays. So I worked a total of over 60 hours a week and got no overtime. This had to be workplace harassment, if not workplace abuse. Through much research, I found out that they were violating the FLSA (Fair Labor Standards Act) and not necessarily workplace harassment, which is why I filed an FLSA lawsuit and won thousands of dollars!

First let me dispel a myth and that is that if you are a salaried employee, you are not eligible for overtime pay. This is not true! There are certain standards that are set forth in the FLSA that must be fully met in order to qualify as exempt from overtime wages. This means that if only one of the conditions of each of the classified exemption statutes is not met, then you are entitled to overtime pay.

The three main exceptions are:

Administrative Exemption

Executive Waiver

Professional Exemption

Everyone has their own particular set of criteria and it is well beyond the scope of this article to address each and every point to see if you qualify for overtime pay. To find out what they are, simply do a search for FLSA Exemptions and see if it applies to you.

One thing is certain, if you are a salaried employee, you may be entitled to collect overtime compensation. What I found interesting is that my own HR department had no idea and assumed I was exempt because I was a manager and was paid a salary. This just tells me that this is happening all over the country and that there are literally thousands and thousands of people who are not being compensated for their overtime work.

If you determine that you are not exempt and file a lawsuit, you are protected from further harassment and abuse by your employer. The law does not allow them to fire you because you filed a case against you and if it can be proven that you were fired because of the lawsuit, they will be liable for additional damages.

They are also not allowed to give you a bad recommendation based on the outcome of the lawsuit. What that means is that if you go looking for another job and your potential new employer calls them up to ask about you, they have to give an honest assessment based on your abilities as an employee. If you discover that you were given a bad recommendation that is wholly unwarranted and based on the lawsuit, you will be liable in a court of law for additional damages. Trust me, once they try the process, they won’t do anything that requires them to go through that process again.

The sword, however, cuts both ways. There will be certain restrictions on your part, which if not followed will leave you liable for monetary compensation to your employer. It’s called disclosure or, more accurately, non-disclosure. You will most likely be asked not to tell anyone about the results of the lawsuit. This protects them from you telling other employees about the case and potentially filing multiple lawsuits against them. What you can do at the beginning of the case is to bring in other employees who are in the same boat as you. This gives your case substance and more firepower and is more likely to settle out of court. The employer will want to settle out of court because if they go to trial and lose, they will be liable to pay double the amount of overtime determined they were negligent in payment.

The FLSA was written to protect the worker. It is most commonly seen in large “class action lawsuits” against a large company. It is rare for a person to win an FLSA case because most people are simply not educated enough and don’t know what to do. There are also money considerations when litigating the case, but what I did was calculate a higher fee based on a percentage, so I had no out of pocket expenses while litigating the case.

I knew nothing about the FLSA and had no idea it belonged to me until I did my research. I learned about workplace bullying and the many ways that we as employees are mistreated on a daily basis. This is what gave me the firepower I needed to collect many thousands of dollars in late payments that I was scammed. Find out if you’re eligible by doing your homework and don’t trust your HR person to tell you the truth. They do not have your best interest in mind. They work for their employer and are accountable to their employer.

Yes, a salaried employee can receive overtime pay if they are classified as non-exempt!