Small Companies, Big (Potential) Liabilities
Posted on 08-Nov-08 by The Timekeeper
Think if you’re a small company, you’re too small for lawyers to bother with when it comes to filing wage and hour lawsuits against you? Think again… According to this article from the HR Daily Advisor, “there’s a new breed of plaintiff lawyer out there.” According to Phillip Russell, a member of the national employment law firm Constangy, Brooks & Smith, LLP, these lawyers aren’t focusing on companies with 1,000 employees; they’re looking for 10 or 15 employees working off the clock and not getting overtime.
Even with just a few employees not getting required overtime over a period of time, it can be worth it for both the employees and the lawyer to bring suit. For FLSA violations, even one employee working off the clock can be enough to warrant a claim.
The problem is, it’s easy for employees to end up working off the clock. It can go on for a long, long time — maybe employees don’t realize what they’re entitled to under the law, or maybe they’re afraid to report it. Sometimes employees put in extra hours on their own, thinking they’re “helping out.” Even if employers and employees have the best of intentions, all it takes is one complaint.
Russell points out it’s the employer’s job to make sure employees get paid for the hours they work. To ensure you don’t end up in trouble inadvertently, you may want to consider spelling it out in your policies that employees are not to work “off the clock,” or you may want to mandate they have to leave their workspace during lunch and break periods to ensure they don’t work through them. It may even require taking disciplinary action against employees if they continue to work extra unpaid or “off the clock” hours.
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