Chicago Illinois Overtime Law Violation Lawyers
An Illinois Based Employment Law Firm Representing Clients Nationwide
Werman Law Office, P.C., is currently investigating industries and employment practices that might be in violation of federal and state minimum wage laws, overtime laws or other employment laws regulating the payment of wages and benefits to employees. If you feel you have been a victim of unfair compensation practices, do not hesitate to contact the Chicago workplace investigations attorneys at our firm.
Some of our current investigations include:
Tipped Employees
The rules and laws governing the payment of minimum wage and overtime pay of "tipped employees" are complicated and frequently abused by employers and restaurants. If you are tipped employee and are subjected to any of the following practices, we would like to talk to you and investigate whether you have properly been paid all the minimum wages, overtime pay, and other wages you earned.
- You are paid a tip credit rate (i.e., an amount less than the minimum wage), but are not allowed to keep or retain all your own tips;
- Supervisors, Managers and/or other non-tipped employees (like chefs, cooks or expeditors) participate in the tip pool or share in your tips;
- You are paid a tip credit rate of pay but more than twenty percent (20%) of your time is spent performing non-tipped work or non-tipped job duties, like attend meetings, washing dishes, or opening or closing the restaurant during which time it is impossible to earn tips;
- You are charged or have deducted from your wages or tips breakage or "walk-off" charges"
- You are charged from your tips or wages an unreasonably high cost of customer credit card charges
Werman Law Office has recovered many millions of dollars for tipped employees.
If you are have questions about how you are being paid as a tipped employee, please contact at no cost Werman Law Office.
Persons Misclassified as Independent Contractors
Many persons are incorrectly and illegally classified as "independent contractors" by their employers. Certain employers classify their employees as independent contractors to avoid paying employees minimum wage, overtime pay and other benefits, including workers' compensation benefits, unemployment insurance benefits, vacation pay, holiday pay and health insurance. Just because your employer does not withhold payroll taxes from your wages, or issues you a Form 1099 instead of a Form W-2 for tax purposes, it does not mean that you are properly considered an independent contractor. Courts look at several factors to determine whether an employee has been wrongly classified as an independent contractor. Some of these factors are:
- Whether the employer controls or has the right to control your work, when you perform your work, and the manner and method in which you perform the work
- Whether the working relationship is permanent
- The degree of skill required to perform the work
- The degree to which your services are an integral part of the business
Some industries that have misclassified employees as independent contractors include cable television installation companies, janitorial companies and contractors, and construction companies.
If you have been classified as an independent contractor, please contact Werman Law Office, P.C., to discuss whether you are entitled to employment benefits, including overtime pay.
Assistant Managers/Shift Supervisors
Many employees are incorrectly classified as exempt from overtime pay because they have been assigned the job title of "manager" or "supervisor." This is not the law. Your job title does not determine whether you are entitled to overtime pay. Instead, your job duties are what matter. Some employers give employees job titles such as "assistant manager" or "shift supervisor" in order to mislead employees into believing that they are not eligible to receive overtime pay. In order to be exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA, however, you must be paid a salary and supervision must be your primary job duty. You must, among other things, supervise at least two employees a minimum of 80 hours per week. If you are an assistant manager or shift supervisor and do not supervise two or more employees on a full-time basis, do not have the authority to hire or fire employees, or if you spend the majority of your time performing the same duties as the employees you supervise, you may be entitled to receive overtime pay.
If you believe that you might be misclassified as an exempt supervisory or executive employee, please contact Werman Law Office, P.C.
Field Engineers and Service Technicians
Certain companies, including many telecommunications companies (e.g., Lucent, T-Mobile, AT&T, SBC, and other IT companies) employ "field engineers" and service technicians who perform job duties such as equipment installation. The work performed by these kinds of employees is primarily manual labor and sometimes customer service. As a general rule, field engineers and service technicians who perform these types of job duties are generally entitled to overtime pay.
If you are employed as field engineer or service technician and have questions about whether you are entitled to overtime pay, please contact Werman Law Office, P.C.
Computer/IT Employees
Many employers consider any employee whose primary job duty is working with computers to be exempt from the overtime pay provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). That is not correct. The majority of computer employees and persons employed in computer-related professions must be paid overtime under law. In order to be classified as exempt, a computer employee must:
- Be paid at least $23.63 per hour.
- Be paid a salary of $455 per week.
In addition to these pay requirements, a computer employee must also work as a software engineer, computer programmer, systems analyst or some other similar job, to be exempt from the overtime pay provisions of the law.
If you work with computers and are not paid overtime pay, please contact Werman Law Office, P.C.
Drivers of Vehicles Under 10,000 lbs
Are you a truck driver or do you drive some other vehicle as part of your job duties? Previously, drivers were generally not covered by the overtime pay laws. On August 10, 2005, Congress changed the overtime law for drivers of vehicles with a Vehicle Gross Weight Rating of 10,000 lbs or less. Thanks to these changes, these drivers are now covered by the federal overtime law. This change in the law will have a very significant impact for several route delivery drivers, including:
- Commercial food delivery drivers
- Newspaper route drivers
- Repair persons who carry parts that originated out of state
Please contact Werman Law Office, P.C., if you drive a truck that weighs less than 10,000 lbs and are not paid overtime pay.
Call Center Workers
Do you work in a call center? Are you paid for all the time that you work each day? Often, employees who work in call centers are paid only for their scheduled shifts, such as 1 p.m. to 9 p.m., and are not paid for all the time they are required to be at their work stations, are not paid for all time they spend on calls with customers, or are not paid for all work time, including the time it takes for boot-up computers in the morning at the start of the workshift. The law requires that call center employees be paid for all the time they work, including overtime pay.
If you are employed in a call center and have questions about how you are paid, please contact Werman Law Office.
Time Spent Performing Duties Related to Work Time
Are you required to wear protective gear or a uniform at work? Some employees who must wear uniforms or other necessary equipment or gear spend significant work time each day putting on and taking off this equipment or safety gear. For the purposes of the law, this is called "donning and doffing" work clothing. Workers employed in the steel industry and poultry industry have successfully asserted donning and doffing cases resulting in the payment of millions of dollars in owed overtime.
If you believe you are owed pay for the time you spend putting on and taking off equipment that is required to perform your job, please contact Werman Law Office, P.C.
Illegal Time Clock Systems
Does your employer use a biometric timekeeping system, electronic "swipe" system or other time clock to record the number of hours you work each week? Certain time clock systems do not fairly or legally record the number of hours employees work because the systems "round down" the time that employees work to the nearest quarter hour solely in favor of the employer. For example, if the employee works until 3:08 p.m., the time clock system will "round" the time down to 3 p.m. Similarly, if the employee works until 2:53 p.m., the employee will only be paid until 2:45 p.m. Put another way, the rounding of time only ever favors the employer.
If you believe that your employer's timekeeping system illegally rounds down your work time or does not otherwise properly record the time you work, please contact Werman Law Office, P.C.
Vacation Pay Claims
Many companies use vacation policies that result in the forfeiture of earned vacation pay upon the termination of employment. For example, if you are terminated "for cause," you lose the vacation pay that you earned and accrued prior to being fired. Other vacation policies require you to work a certain amount of hours in the calendar year, and be employed on a certain date, in order to be entitled to your "vacation benefit." These kinds of vacation policies may violate state law and result in an unlawful forfeiture of your earned vacation pay.
Werman Law Office has recovered millions of dollars in owed vacation pay, including the largest vacation pay settlement in Illinois history, $11,000,000 for over 95,000 Illinois employees.
If you have lost your vacation pay under this kind of vacation policy, or some other vacation policy, please contact Werman Law Office, P.C.
Temporary Employees
Temporary staffing companies often do not pay their workers all their earned wages. Often, temporary workers are assigned to work at a third-party client company that does not report to the staffing company all the time the employee worked. The fewer hours reported by the third-party client company, the less money they pay to the staffing company. As a result, there is great incentive to under-report the time worked by temporary workers. Because many temporary workers are paid minimum wages, the failure to be paid for all time worked means such employees are not paid minimum wages. In addition, the failure to be paid for all time worked also results in not being paid all earned overtime pay and other earned wages.
Another common scheme is when an employee works at third-party client company A for 30 hours in a week, and third-party client company B for 20 hours in the same work week. Oftentimes, the temporary staffing company will pay the employee in two checks: one for 30 hours and one for 20 hours — all at the employee's regular hourly rate of pay. In this example, however, the law requires that the employee be paid 40 hours of straight-time pay and 10 hours of overtime wages.
Also, temporary employees often are not paid all their earned and accrued vacation time when their employment is terminated. For example, some temporary staffing companies maintain policies which require employees to work a certain number of hours in a calendar year, and be employed in December of that same year, in order to receive vacation pay. Depending on the state in which you work, such a vacation policy may be unlawful. These policies have been found to be unlawful in Illinois, California, Iowa, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island and Tennessee.
If you are a temporary worker and have been subjected to any of these practices, please contact Werman Law Office, P.C.
Contact an Overtime Law Violations Attorney
Werman Law Office, P.C. represents persons in Cook County, Illinois, everywhere else in Illinois, and represents employees with overtime pay claims and FLSA (fair labor standards act) cases throughout the U.S. including the states and cities of Oakland, California CA, San Francisco California CA, Seattle Washington WA, Gary Indiana IN, Milwaukee Wisconsin WI, New York NY, New Jersey NJ, Miami Florida FL, Atlanta Georgia GA, Alabama AL, Arkansas AR, Mississippi MS, Louisiana LA, Oklahoma OK, Washington WA, Kentucky KY, Massachusetts MA, Connecticut CT, Maine ME, New Hampshire NH, Los Angeles California CA, Dallas DFW, San Antonio, Austin Texas TX , Chicago Illinois IL, Denver Colorado CO, Oregon OR, Ohio OH, New York NY, New Jersey NJ, Miami Florida FL, Atlanta Georgia GA, Alabama AL, Arkansas AR, Mississippi MS, Louisiana LA, Oklahoma OK, Washington WA, Kentucky KY, Massachusetts MA, Connecticut CT, Maine ME, New Hampshire NH, Albuquerque New Mexico NM, Las Vegas Nevada NV, Iowa IA, Hawaii Hi and Alaska AK. If you have questions regarding our current investigations, contact Werman Law Office to learn more about your rights. Prospective clients can schedule an appointment by calling 877-743-0399 or by filling out the e-mail form on this website.
