In the United States, employees have many rights including the right to fair pay. Nevertheless, many employees are denied proper wages and small individual wage claims are often not pursued. Thus, combining similar individual claims into one class action can vindicate the rights of a large number of employees at one time.

At the offices of Belt Law Firm, our team of skilled lawyers can help employees with wage and employment disputes and, when necessary, aggressively pursue and defend their interests.

Employees must be paid the minimum wage, must be paid for all hours worked, and must be paid overtime in certain instances. The source of most litigation concerning employment wages is governed by a federal law known as the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Most states also have wage and hour laws that may differ from the federal law. The Fair Labor Standards Act also requires that covered, nonexempt employees must be paid overtime pay for any hours worked over 40 in one week at a rate of not less than one and one-half times an employee's regular rate of pay. In some jurisdictions, the rules for overtime pay apply for any hours worked over eight hours in one day.

Certain employees are exempt from both minimum wage and overtime pay laws provided they meet certain tests regarding job duties and are compensated by salary at not less than stated amounts. These salaried workers include executive, administrative, professional and outside sales employees.

In recent years, the number of class action lawsuits filed under the wage and hour laws has greatly increased and now outnumbers the more familiar employment discrimination class actions. One reason for this surge is that it has become common knowledge that employers routinely fall short in their wage and hour compliance efforts.

Typical employment violations include:

• Unpaid rest breaks
• Unpaid meal breaks
• Misclassification of employees as exempt from overtime
• Misclassification of independent contractors as employees
• Failure to reimburse employees for expenses incurred in carrying out their employment (most often seen with employees who use their cars in carrying out job functions)
• Calculating overtime incorrectly
• Taking improper deductions from salaries
• Improperly recording and paying for all hours worked
• Failure to reimburse for off-the-clock work such as on-call time, travel time and mandated meetings
• Failure to reimburse for pre-shift or post-shift work such as changing clothes, cleaning up, following check-in or check-out procedures and walking to or from workstations.

Our firm handles a broad spectrum of cases and is dedicated to protecting the rights of employees. For your free consultation with a Labor and Employment Law Attorney, fill out our contact form or call us at 888-933-1514 (toll free).