Werman Law Office, P.C. is investigating various industries and compensation and employment practices that may violate federal and state minimum wage, overtime law, and other employment laws regulating the payment of wages and benefits to employees. Some of our current investigations include the following:

Paycards and Stored Value Cards

Are you paid with a paycard or stored value card, instead of by direct deposit or instead of being paid with a payroll check? Are you charged to withdraw your pay or wages from the paycard? Are there limits to the amount of pay or wages you can withdraw from your paycard at any one time? Your employer’s use of paycards and stored value cards may violate the federal fair labor standards act and state wage and hour laws, including the Illinois Wage Payment Act. If you are paid with a paycard or stored value card, 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 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. 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, temproary 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 staffing company. As a result, there is great incentive to under report the time work 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. Often times, the temporary staffing company will pay the employee in 2 checks, one for 30 hours and one 20 hours, all at the employees 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.

Temporary employees also are often 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 has been subjected to any of these practices, pelase 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 exempt (not entitled to overtime), a computer employee must:

• be paid at least $23.63 an hour; or
• be paid a salary of $455 a week.

In addition to these pay requirements, above, 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 exempt from, or 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. Drivers of these vehicles were generally exempt from the federal overtime law prior to August 2005 (if they carried goods across state lines, or if the goods originated out of state), but now these drivers are not exempt and are covered by the federal overtime law. This change in the law will have a very significant impact for route delivery drivers (commercial food delivery drivers, Newspaper Route Drivers and repairpersons (those who carry parts that originated out of state). Please contact Werman Law Office, P.C. if you drive of truck that weights less than 10,000 lbs and are not paid overtime pay.   

School Bus Drivers

Many school bus companies mistakenly treat their school bus drivers as exempt from the overtime provisions of the FLSA. These companies believe that a law called the “Motors Carrier Act” exempts or excludes them from the overtime provisions of the FLSA. In fact, the Motor Carriers Act exempts bus drivers, but not school bus drivers. In fact, employees who transport school children on a regular basis in school buses are covered by the FLSA and must be paid overtime. If you are a school bus driver who is not being paid overtime, please contact Werman Law Office, P.C.

Call Center Workers

Do you work in a call center? Are you paid for all the time that work each day? Often, employees who work in call centers are paid only for their scheduled shift, such as 1:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m., and are not paid for all the time they are required to be at their work stations or are not paid for all time they spend on calls with customers. The law requires that call center employees be paid for all 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, P.C.

Donning and Doffing

Are you required to wear a uniform at work? Some employees that must wear uniforms or other necessary equipment or gear on their jobs spend a significant work time each day “donning and doffing” (i.e., putting on and taking off) their equipment and/or gear. Employees 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 (1/4) 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 3:00 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.

Persons Misclassified as Independent Contractors

Are you wrongly considered an “independent contractor,” and not an employee, by your employer? 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 other benefits, including 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 your 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 principal’s 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

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 2 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 you time performing the same duties as the employees you are 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) 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 result, 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 filed engineer or service technician and have questions about whether you are entitled to overtime pay, please contact Werman Law Office, P.C.

Questions? Contact an Overtime pay lawyer at Werman Law Office, P.C.