Summary. What you are owed, the four ways employers avoid paying it, and what the recovery actually looks like.

The largest theft nobody calls theft

Estimates of wages stolen from American workers each year — through unpaid overtime, off-the-clock work, minimum wage violations, misclassification, and stolen tips — run into the billions, and consistently exceed the total value of all robberies, burglaries, and motor vehicle thefts combined.

Almost none of it is prosecuted. It is handled, when it is handled at all, as a civil matter, by workers who do not know what they are owed, against employers who control the records.

That last fact is the most important one in this article, and it cuts the opposite way from how most workers assume: the recordkeeping obligation belongs to the employer. Where an employer has failed to keep accurate records, a worker may establish hours by reasonable inference from available evidence, and the burden shifts to the employer to negate it. The absence of records is the employer's problem, not yours.

What the law actually requires

The Fair Labor Standards Act — 29 U.S.C. § 201 and following — establishes three core obligations for covered, non-exempt employees.

Minimum wage. 29 U.S.C. § 206 sets a federal floor. Many states and cities set higher ones, and the higher rate applies. Always check state and local law first.

Overtime. 29 U.S.C. § 207 requires one and one-half times the regular rate for all hours over 40 in a workweek.

Four things about that sentence get litigated constantly:

  • "Workweek" is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours. Averaging two weeks together is not permitted — 50 hours one week and 30 the next is ten hours of overtime, not zero.
  • "Regular rate" is not the hourly rate. It includes nondiscretionary bonuses, shift differentials, commissions, and most incentive pay, all of which must be folded in and the overtime recalculated. The rules are at 29 C.F.R. Part 778. This is one of the most common and least visible violations.
  • "Hours worked" includes all time an employee is suffered or permitted to work — whether or not it was authorized. An employer who knows or has reason to know that work is being performed must pay for it.
  • Some states require daily overtime — over 8 hours in a day — and some require double time. Federal law is a floor.

Recordkeeping. The employer must keep accurate records of hours worked and wages paid. Definitions are at 29 U.S.C. § 203.

The four ways employers avoid paying

1. Calling you exempt when you are not

The single largest source of unpaid overtime.

Exemptions are at 29 U.S.C. § 213, with the "white collar" exemptions defined at 29 C.F.R. Part 541.

To be exempt under the executive, administrative, or professional exemptions, an employee generally must satisfy all of:

  1. The salary basis test — paid a predetermined amount not subject to reduction based on quality or quantity of work
  2. The salary level test — paid at least the threshold amount
  3. The duties test — the actual primary duties must fit the exemption

The mistakes employers make, in order of frequency:

Assuming salary equals exempt. It does not. Being paid a salary is necessary and nowhere near sufficient. A salaried worker who fails the duties test is entitled to overtime.

Relying on a job title. "Assistant Manager," "Coordinator," "Analyst," and "Supervisor" mean nothing. The analysis is what you actually do all day.

Failing the duties test. The executive exemption requires management as the primary duty, customarily directing two or more full-time employees, and authority (or influence) over hiring and firing. An "assistant manager" who spends 90% of the shift running a register, stocking, and cleaning is not exempt regardless of title or salary.

Destroying the salary basis by making improper deductions. Docking an exempt employee's salary for partial-day absences, for equipment damage, for cash register shortages, or for slow business can defeat the exemption entirely — sometimes for the whole class of similarly situated employees.

Misapplying the administrative exemption, which requires office or non-manual work directly related to management or general business operations, and the exercise of discretion and independent judgment with respect to matters of significance. Following a detailed script or manual is generally not that.

Exemptions are construed against the employer, and the employer bears the burden of proving one applies.

2. Calling you an independent contractor when you are not

Misclassification transfers the employer's costs onto the worker: no overtime, no minimum wage, no employer payroll tax contribution, no workers' compensation, no unemployment insurance, no benefits, and no anti-discrimination coverage in many contexts.

The label does not control. A signed independent contractor agreement, a 1099, and a business license are evidence, and they lose to the economic reality of the relationship.

The factors courts weigh — and the precise test varies by statute and by state, which matters enormously:

  • The degree of control the company exercises over how the work is done
  • The worker's opportunity for profit or loss based on managerial skill
  • The worker's investment in equipment or facilities, relative to the company's
  • Whether the work requires special skill and initiative
  • The permanence of the relationship
  • Whether the work is an integral part of the company's business

Several states apply a stricter "ABC test" for at least some purposes, under which a worker is an employee unless the hiring entity proves all three of: freedom from control; work outside the usual course of the hiring entity's business; and the worker's customary engagement in an independently established trade of the same nature. The middle prong is the one that fails most often — a driver for a delivery company is doing the delivery company's usual business.

Signs of misclassification: you were told when and where to work · you use the company's equipment · you cannot subcontract the work · you have no other clients · you were an employee doing the same job before · you were required to wear a uniform · your rate is set by the company · you can be fired at will.

3. Off-the-clock work

Time worked that is never recorded:

  • Pre-shift and post-shift work — setup, cleanup, security screening, computer boot-up, cash counting, closing procedures
  • Working through unpaid meal breaks, which is extremely common. A meal period is only unpaid if the employee is completely relieved of duty. Eating at a desk while answering the phone is compensable time.
  • Automatic meal deductions taken whether or not the break occurred
  • Travel between job sites during the workday, which is generally compensable
  • Mandatory training and meetings
  • Remote work after hours — email, messages, and calls
  • On-call time, where the restrictions are severe enough that the time is spent predominantly for the employer's benefit
  • Rounding that systematically favors the employer

The controlling principle: an employer must pay for work it knows or has reason to know is being performed. A policy prohibiting off-the-clock work does not excuse an employer that accepts the benefit of it.

Note that Sandifer v. United States Steel, 571 U.S. 220 (2014), addressed time spent changing clothes and held that the time at issue there qualified as "changing clothes" excludable under a collective bargaining provision — a reminder that this area is fact-specific and that collective agreements can alter the analysis.

4. Manipulating the regular rate

The subtlest and least visible violation.

The regular rate must include nondiscretionary bonuses, production and attendance bonuses, shift differentials, commissions, and most incentive pay. When a quarterly bonus is paid, the overtime already worked in that quarter must be recalculated at the higher regular rate and the difference paid.

Almost no employer does this, and almost no employee knows to ask. Over a year with several bonus payments and regular overtime, the amount is substantial.

Tips

Where a tip credit is taken, the employer pays a reduced cash wage and counts tips toward the minimum wage. The requirements are strict, and failure to satisfy any of them means the tip credit is lost entirely and the full minimum wage is owed for all hours.

What is required:

  • Advance notice to the employee of the tip credit provisions
  • Tips plus cash wage must equal at least the full minimum wage — the employer makes up any shortfall
  • The employee must retain all tips, except for a valid tip pool
  • A valid tip pool may include only employees who customarily and regularly receive tips
  • Managers and supervisors may not keep tips, and generally may not participate in a tip pool, under any circumstances
  • The employer may not keep any portion of tips for any purpose

The recurring violations: requiring tipped employees to share tips with kitchen staff while taking a tip credit · deducting credit card processing fees beyond the actual cost · requiring tipped employees to spend substantial time on non-tipped duties while paying the tipped rate · managers taking a share.

Several states prohibit the tip credit entirely and require the full state minimum wage plus tips. Check state law.

Breaks, and the state-law layer

Federal law does not require meal or rest breaks. It requires that short breaks (generally under 20 minutes) be paid, and that a bona fide meal period be unpaid only if the employee is completely relieved of duty.

State law is where break rights come from, and it varies enormously. Many states require a 30-minute meal period after a specified number of hours, and a number require paid rest breaks of ten minutes per four hours worked — frequently with a penalty payment of one hour of pay for each day a required break was not provided. In states with these penalties, break violations are a substantial component of most wage claims.

Also state law: daily overtime · double time · pay frequency · permissible deductions · reporting-time pay · split-shift premiums · and final paycheck timing.

The final paycheck

Most states impose a deadline for the final paycheck, frequently distinguishing between quitting and being fired — commonly immediately or within 72 hours on discharge, and by the next regular payday on resignation.

Many states impose a penalty for late final pay — in some states, continuing wages for each day late, up to a cap of 30 days. This penalty is frequently larger than the underlying wages.

Also check: whether accrued vacation must be paid out (a state-law question, and in some states it is treated as earned wages that cannot be forfeited) · whether the employer may deduct for equipment, uniforms, shortages, or training costs (heavily restricted or prohibited in many states) · and whether commissions earned but not yet paid are owed.

What the recovery looks like

This is where wage claims differ from most consumer disputes, and it is why lawyers take them.

Back wages — the unpaid minimum wage and overtime.

Liquidated damages — under 29 U.S.C. § 216, an amount equal to the back wages, effectively doubling the recovery, unless the employer proves it acted in good faith with reasonable grounds to believe it was not violating the Act. The default is doubling.

Attorney's fees and costs to a prevailing plaintiff — which is what makes representation available on a $9,000 claim.

A two-year limitations period, extended to three years for a willful violation — 29 U.S.C. § 255.

And crucially: the clock runs backward from the filing date, and each payday is a separate violation. Which means every week you wait, a week of claim expires.

State remedies are frequently better — longer limitations periods, higher penalties (some states provide treble damages), waiting-time penalties, and in some states personal liability for owners and officers.

Retaliation

29 U.S.C. § 215 prohibits discharging or discriminating against an employee for filing a complaint, instituting a proceeding, or testifying.

Protected activity is broader than people assume. It includes internal complaints in many circuits, complaints to a state agency, participation in an investigation, and — in most jurisdictions — an oral complaint that is sufficiently clear and detailed to put the employer on notice.

The retaliation claim is frequently stronger than the wage claim itself, because the timing is provable and the causation is visible. An employee who complains about unpaid overtime on Tuesday and is fired on Friday has a case that does not depend on reconstructing two years of hours.

Which means: document the complaint. Put it in writing, keep a copy, and note the date. That single act converts a wage dispute into a wage-plus-retaliation dispute if the employer reacts badly.

Four workers

The assistant manager who ran a register

Ottoline Beauvais-Nkemdirim was an "Assistant Store Manager" at a retail chain, salaried at $52,000, working 55 to 60 hours a week with no overtime.

Her employer's position was simple: she was salaried, she had "Manager" in her title, and she was exempt.

Neither of those establishes anything.

The executive exemption requires that management be the primary duty, that she customarily and regularly direct two or more full-time employees, and that she have authority or meaningful influence over hiring and firing.

What she actually did, reconstructed from her own schedule notes and the store's task assignments: roughly 85% of her time on the register, stocking, receiving trucks, cleaning, and covering breaks. She could not hire, fire, discipline beyond a verbal warning, set schedules, or order inventory. Every one of those decisions ran through the district manager.

She also found the salary basis problem. On three occasions the company had docked her pay for partial-day absences. That kind of improper deduction can defeat the exemption entirely — and where there is a pattern, potentially for everyone similarly situated.

The recovery: roughly 17 hours of unpaid overtime per week, over two years — and three years, because the pattern was found to be willful. Back wages, plus liquidated damages doubling them, plus attorney's fees.

The lesson. The title is irrelevant. The salary is necessary and not sufficient. The question is what you do all day, and the burden of proving the exemption is the employer's.

The driver who was a contractor on paper

Fitzgerald Achebe-Vance drove for a regional delivery company. He signed an independent contractor agreement, received a 1099, and was required to obtain a business license.

He also: wore the company's uniform · drove a van with the company's logo · followed routes the company assigned · used the company's handheld scanner · worked hours the company set · could not decline assignments without consequence · had no other clients · and was subject to termination at will.

The label lost to the reality.

His state applied the ABC test, under which he was an employee unless the company proved all three prongs. It failed the second one immediately: delivery is the delivery company's usual course of business, so a driver cannot be performing work outside it.

What misclassification had cost him, once reclassified: unpaid overtime for years of 55-hour weeks · the employer's share of payroll taxes he had been paying himself · workers' compensation coverage he never had · unemployment insurance eligibility · and the expenses the company had shifted onto him.

The lesson. A signed contract and a 1099 are evidence, not answers. The middle prong of the ABC test is the one that fails, and it fails for anyone doing the company's core business.

The automatic deduction

Perpetua Ilunga-Whitcombe worked in a hospital where the timekeeping system automatically deducted thirty minutes for a meal break every shift.

She almost never got one. She ate at the nurses' station, answered call lights, and was interrupted every shift. The deduction happened anyway.

Two rules governed:

A meal period is unpaid only if the employee is completely relieved of duty. Eating while responding to patients is not relieved of duty; it is compensable work time.

An automatic deduction is lawful only if there is a real mechanism to cancel it and the employer does not discourage its use — and an employer that knows or has reason to know the breaks are not being taken must pay for the time.

Thirty minutes a shift, five shifts a week, over two years, all of it at the overtime rate because she was already past 40 — plus liquidated damages doubling it.

The lesson. Automatic meal deductions are among the most widespread wage violations in health care, hospitality, and manufacturing, and they are provable from the employer's own records showing patient care activity during "break" time.

The quarterly bonus nobody recalculated

Cassius Oyelaran-Sandoval worked at a plant with regular overtime and a quarterly production bonus of $600 to $900.

His overtime was paid at 1.5 times his hourly rate. It should not have been.

The regular rate must include nondiscretionary bonuses — and a production bonus tied to output is nondiscretionary. When the bonus is paid, the overtime already worked during the bonus period must be recalculated at the higher regular rate and the difference paid.

Nobody had ever done it. Not for him, and not for the 340 other people at the plant.

Individually the amount was a few hundred dollars a year. Collectively, over three years, it was substantial — and it is exactly the kind of violation that produces a collective action, because it is uniform, provable from payroll records, and requires no testimony about what anyone did all day.

The lesson. The regular rate violation is the most invisible one in wage and hour law. Nobody notices it, it appears on no pay stub as a shortfall, and it is arithmetically certain once the bonus structure is known.

Where to bring it

Four routes, with different tradeoffs, and choosing badly costs time.

The federal Wage and Hour Division. Free. Investigates, can supervise payment of back wages, and can bring its own action. Advantages: costs nothing, and an investigation frequently covers everyone at the workplace rather than just you. Limitations: you do not control it, it can be slow, an investigation may not result in liquidated damages, and accepting a supervised payment generally waives your private right of action for those wages. Filing does not toll the statute of limitations for a private suit — which matters, because the clock keeps running.

The state labor agency. Frequently faster than the federal route, frequently with better remedies, and in many states with a straightforward administrative wage claim process, a hearing, and an order. Some states impose penalties federal law does not — waiting-time penalties, break penalties, treble damages. This is the right first stop in most states, and it is free.

A private lawsuit. Individually or as a collective action. Advantages: you control it, liquidated damages are the default, attorney's fees shift, and state claims can be joined. Practical note: wage and hour attorneys take these on contingency precisely because of the fee shifting, and the initial consultation is nearly always free.

Small claims court, for a modest amount, if the state permits wage claims there. Fast and cheap; no fee shifting and no collective mechanism.

A note on collective actions. Federal wage claims proceed as opt-in collective actions — other employees must affirmatively join. State class actions frequently proceed on an opt-out basis. The difference matters when a violation is uniform across a workforce, which regular-rate, automatic-deduction, and misclassification cases usually are.

And a note on arbitration. Many employment agreements require individual arbitration and waive collective proceedings. Read what you signed. Such agreements are generally enforceable, though there are exceptions, and their existence changes the strategy — sometimes toward an agency filing, which an arbitration clause typically cannot foreclose.

Reconstructing the hours

Most wage claims fail or succeed on the same question: how many hours did you actually work? And most workers assume that without the employer's records, there is nothing to be done.

The opposite is true. The recordkeeping duty is the employer's. Where records are inadequate or nonexistent, a worker may prove hours by just and reasonable inference from available evidence, and the burden shifts to the employer to negate the inference. An employer that kept no records cannot then demand precision from you.

What counts as evidence:

  • Your own contemporaneous notes — a calendar, a notebook, a phone note. These do not have to be perfect; they have to be honest and made at the time.
  • Text messages and emails with timestamps, especially ones sent before or after scheduled hours
  • Badge swipe and access logs, which the employer has
  • Point-of-sale records showing transactions you rang
  • Computer login and logout records
  • Dispatch, delivery, and route records
  • GPS and telematics data from a company vehicle or phone
  • Patient charting timestamps, in health care
  • Security camera footage, which is overwritten quickly — a preservation letter matters
  • Schedules, posted or texted
  • Co-workers' testimony about a common practice
  • Your own pay stubs, which show what you were paid and, by inference, what you were not

The reconstruction that works is a simple table: week by week, the hours you actually worked, the hours you were paid for, and the difference, with a note on the basis for each week. It does not need to be exact. It needs to be reasonable, consistent, and supported by something.

Start it today, because memory degrades and because the limitations clock is running backward from the day you file.

Prevention, for people still in the job

Keep your own record. Every day, the time you started and stopped, including work before clocking in and after clocking out. A phone note takes ten seconds and it is the single most valuable thing a worker in a wage-theft situation can do.

Save your pay stubs. All of them. And check them — the hours, the rate, the deductions.

Screenshot your schedule each week.

Email yourself a summary at the end of each week. A dated email to your own account is contemporaneous evidence.

Note the bonuses and when they were paid, so the regular-rate calculation can be done later.

Ask questions in writing. "I want to make sure I understand — am I classified as exempt? Which exemption applies?" The answer, in writing, is useful whichever way it comes.

Complain in writing when something is wrong. It is what converts a wage claim into a wage-plus-retaliation claim if the employer reacts badly, and the retaliation claim is frequently the stronger one.

Do not sign anything acknowledging that you were paid in full, or releasing claims, without understanding what it gives up.

Know that you cannot waive FLSA rights privately. An agreement to accept less than minimum wage or to forgo overtime is generally unenforceable, and a private settlement of FLSA claims frequently requires court or agency approval to be effective.

Industries where this concentrates

Wage violations are not evenly distributed. They cluster where hours are irregular, turnover is high, workers are least likely to complain, and the pay structure is complicated. Knowing the pattern in your industry tells you what to look for.

Restaurants and food service. Tip credit violations · invalid tip pools including managers or kitchen staff · off-the-clock side work · automatic meal deductions · unpaid opening and closing time · deductions for walkouts, breakage, and register shortages, which are prohibited or restricted nearly everywhere.

Retail. Assistant manager misclassification, which is the single largest exempt-status problem in the country · off-the-clock closing procedures and security checks · unpaid mandatory meetings · on-call scheduling.

Health care. Automatic meal deductions in the face of continuous patient care · unpaid shift-change handoff · mandatory training on unpaid time · on-call time with severe restrictions · "charge nurse" and similar roles misclassified as exempt.

Construction. Independent contractor misclassification, frequently through labor brokers · unpaid travel between job sites during the workday · cash payment without records · prevailing wage violations on public projects, which carry their own remedies · joint employer questions where a general contractor controls the work.

Trucking and delivery. Contractor misclassification · unpaid detention and loading time · pay structures that produce sub-minimum wage in low-mileage weeks · unpaid pre- and post-trip inspections.

Home care and domestic work. Live-in and sleep-time rules that are frequently misapplied · travel between clients · misclassification as contractors · third-party employer questions.

Agriculture. Distinct exemptions apply, along with a separate federal statute governing migrant and seasonal farmworkers with its own disclosure, housing, transportation, and recordkeeping requirements and its own remedies.

Warehousing and logistics. Pre-shift and post-shift time · rounding · production bonuses excluded from the regular rate · temporary staffing arrangements raising joint employer questions.

Salons, car washes, and small retail. Cash payment · commission structures that fall below minimum wage in slow weeks · deductions for products and supplies · training periods paid at nothing.

And a general pattern worth naming: where a workforce is immigrant, young, or working through a staffing agency, violation rates are consistently higher — because complaint rates are lower. Immigration status does not affect entitlement to wages already earned, and wage and hour agencies do not condition claims on it.

For employers

The other side of this deserves treatment, because most wage violations are not deliberate theft. They are a payroll practice adopted years ago that nobody has examined, and the exposure compounds silently across an entire workforce.

The audit that prevents most of it takes a day and covers five things:

1. Test every exemption against the duties, not the title. Sit with each exempt job and ask what the person actually does in a week. The burden of proving an exemption is yours, exemptions are construed narrowly, and a title with "manager" in it proves nothing. Pay particular attention to assistant managers, coordinators, and anyone whose day is mostly the same work their subordinates do.

2. Check the regular rate. If you pay any nondiscretionary bonus, shift differential, commission, or incentive, is the overtime being recalculated? Almost nobody does this, it is arithmetically certain once discovered, and it applies uniformly across everyone who got the bonus — which is exactly what makes it a collective action.

3. Look at where off-the-clock time hides. Pre-shift setup. Post-shift closing. Automatic meal deductions. Security screening. Booting a computer. Answering messages after hours. A policy prohibiting it does not help if the work is being done and you are accepting the benefit.

4. Review every contractor relationship against the applicable test — and note that the applicable test differs by statute and by state, and that several states apply an ABC test whose middle prong fails for anyone doing your core business.

5. Check the records. Accurate time records are a legal obligation and, in a dispute, they are your only defense. Where records are inadequate, hours may be established by inference and the burden shifts to you.

Two things that make exposure much worse:

Improper deductions from exempt salaries. Docking for partial-day absences, register shortages, or equipment damage can defeat the exemption — potentially for everyone in the classification.

Retaliating against a complaint. The retaliation claim is frequently worth more than the underlying wages and is far easier to prove.

And two that make it much better:

Fixing it prospectively the moment you find it, which is the strongest evidence of the good faith that can defeat liquidated damages.

Documenting the analysis. An employer who examined an exemption, wrote down why it applies, and can produce that analysis is in a materially different position from one who never thought about it.

Who else might be liable

A wage claim against an employer that has no money is a claim against nothing, which is why the question of who else is on the hook is frequently the difference between a judgment and a payment.

Individual owners, officers, and managers. The Act's definition of "employer" includes any person acting directly or indirectly in the interest of an employer, and courts have found individual liability for owners and managers with operational control over pay practices. Several states go further, imposing personal liability on officers by statute. This matters enormously when a company dissolves.

Joint employers. Two entities may both be liable where each exercises control over the terms and conditions of employment. The recurring situations: a staffing agency and the client where the client directs the work · a franchisor and franchisee, depending on the degree of control · a general contractor and a subcontractor's employees — and several states impose direct liability on general contractors for a subcontractor's wage violations, particularly in construction · labor brokers and farm labor contractors, where the grower or processor may be a joint employer.

Successor entities. A company that dissolves and reappears under a new name, with the same owners, the same equipment, and the same workforce, may be liable as a successor. This is common enough to be a recognized pattern.

Bonds and funds. Some industries require contractor licensing bonds that a wage claim can reach, and some states operate wage payment funds for claims against insolvent employers. Ask the state labor agency whether either exists for your industry.

Public projects. Work on a federal or state public works project carries prevailing wage obligations and, frequently, a payment bond that a worker can claim against directly — a route that exists independent of the employer's solvency.

And a practical note: the entity on your paycheck may not be the entity that controls your work. Look at the pay stub, the W-2 or 1099, the sign on the building, the vehicles, the uniform, and the person who actually directs you. Where those point to different companies, name all of them.

A closing observation

Wage and hour law is unusual in one respect that is worth naming, because it changes how a worker should think about a claim.

Almost every other consumer or civil claim requires the plaintiff to have kept records. Here, the recordkeeping duty is the defendant's, and its failure to keep records helps the plaintiff rather than the plaintiff's failure to keep them hurting her. Almost every other claim requires proof of damages with precision. Here, reasonable inference suffices once inadequate records are shown. Almost every other small claim is uneconomical to litigate. Here, liquidated damages double the recovery and attorney's fees shift, which is why a $9,000 unpaid overtime claim gets a lawyer and a $9,000 breach of contract claim does not.

The structure was built that way deliberately, because Congress understood that the party with the records, the lawyers, and the ongoing relationship is not the worker.

What defeats it is not the law. It is time — the limitations clock running backward from the day of filing, so that every week of hesitation retires a week of claim — and silence, because a violation nobody reports is a violation that continues against everyone else at that workplace too.

Which suggests the two practical conclusions this article is really about:

Write down your hours, starting today. Ten seconds a day, in a phone note. It is the highest-value habit available to anyone who suspects they are being underpaid.

And find out sooner rather than later. A free consultation with a wage and hour attorney, a call to the state labor agency, or twenty minutes with the exemption duties test costs nothing and frequently reveals that the answer is not what the employer has been saying — and that a substantial amount of money has been quietly accruing in your favor the entire time.

Frequently asked questions

I'm salaried. Am I owed overtime? Possibly. Salary is necessary but nowhere near sufficient for exemption. The duties test is what decides it, and the employer bears the burden.

My employer says I'm a contractor. The label does not control. If the company directs how you work, provides the equipment, and you have no other clients, you may be an employee. Several states apply a stricter test than federal law.

I worked through lunch. If you were not completely relieved of duty, that time is compensable — and an automatic deduction taken anyway is a violation.

They didn't authorize the overtime. Irrelevant if they knew or had reason to know you worked it. "Suffered or permitted" is the standard.

My employer has no records. That is the employer's problem. Where records are inadequate, hours may be established by reasonable inference and the burden shifts to the employer.

How far back can I go? Two years, three for willful violations, under federal law — and the clock runs backward from filing, so every week of delay costs a week of claim. State law is frequently longer.

Will I get double? Liquidated damages equal to the back wages are the default unless the employer proves good faith.

Can they fire me for complaining? No, and if they do, the retaliation claim is frequently the stronger one. Complain in writing and keep a copy.

Where do I file? The federal Wage and Hour Division, your state labor agency, or a private lawsuit. Each has different advantages, and filing with one does not always preserve rights under another.

Related documents

Educational only, not legal advice. State wage and hour law frequently provides more than federal law — higher minimum wages, daily overtime, break requirements with penalties, longer limitations periods, and waiting-time penalties. Check it first.