Posted on 04-Mar-10 by The Timekeeper

Not too long ago, the U.S. Department of Labor got $61,962 in back wages for 21 current and former health care workers of Davis Life Care Center in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The problem was that Davis Life Care Center has two locations across the street from each other, and they failed to combine hours worked at both locations when determining employee overtime.

In cases that are somewhat similar, a number of school districts over the years have been found guilty of violating either overtime or minimum wage rules (or both) for failing to add up all an employee’s hours worked regardless of the job they were doing — so, for instance, the math teacher who also coaches girls’ soccer, or the school secretary who also drives a school bus, would find the hours they worked at their two different jobs taken separately rather than added together when calculating overtime.

According to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), it’s the hours a person works for an enterprise that count, not the hours they work at an individual location or job within that enterprise. For example, multiple locations owned and controlled by the same person or people, and having the same business purpose, are considered an enterprise.

You can’t get out of paying overtime by counting hours worked at different jobs or different locations, all within your business, separately.

No Comments

No comments yet.

Comments RSS TrackBack Identifier URI

Leave a comment