Is your Agency guilty of violating any of these laws?
- Telling you that you can’t discuss your salary with your co-workers. The National Labor Relations Act says that employers can’t prevent most employees from discussing wages among themselves. The reason for that is that employees can’t effectively organize or unionize if they’re not permitted to discuss wages or uncover potential inequities.
Despite the law, an astonishing number of employers have policies against this anyway, causing most employees to think that these policies are normal and have no idea that they actually violate the labor laws.
- Treating you as exempt from overtime pay. Whether or not you’re eligible for overtime pay isn’t up to your employer. It’s supposed to be governed by the type of work you do. The federal government divides all types of jobs into one of two categories: exempt and non-exempt. If your job is categorized as non-exempt, your employer must pay you overtime (time and a half) for all hours you work beyond 40 in any given week.
The exempt category is reserved for employees who perform relatively high-level executive or professional work, outside sales employees and a few other narrowly defined categories. But many employers incorrectly categorize employees as exempt when they don’t actually meet the government’s qualifications for the category, and thus avoid paying overtime to people who the law says should be earning it.
- Asking or allowing you to work off the clock. If you’re a non-exempt employee, you must be paid for all the time you work, including things outside of your normal work hours, such as answering emails or taking calls from home at night or on the weekend.
You can’t waive this right even if you want to. Your employer is required to pay you for that time.
- Hiring independent contractors but treating them like employees. If your employer controls when, where and how you work, the government says that you’re an employee and your company needs to pay your payroll taxes and offer you the same benefits it offers to regular employees.
Yet despite recent crackdowns on this by the government, many employers continue to hire independent contractors and treat them like employees – in every way but pay.
- Disciplining you for complaining about work on social media. The National Labor Relations Act protects employees’ ability to discuss wages and working conditions with each other. The National Labor Relations Board has ruled repeatedly that employers’ attempts to control or limit what employees post on social media often violate the employees’ rights to engage in “protected concerted activity,” and that employees must be permitted to band together to try to make changes to their employment conditions, even if all they wish to do is to complain as a group.
In many cases, the NLRB has warned employers that workers have the right to say negative things about their jobs in public forums without risk of harassment, bullying, discrimination or retaliation. That said, the NLRB does generally permit employers to prohibit maliciously false statements about the company.
Here’s what to do if your employer is violating one of these laws.
If your employer is violating one of the laws, in most cases the first step is simply to talk to your manager, start from the assumption that he or she doesn’t realize that there’s a legal issue. As opposed to taking an adversarial stance right off the bat, ask for a meeting with a third party present and bring it to his or her attention, always document meetings of this nature.
Example: If the agency is asking you to work unpaid overtime when you’re a non-exempt employee, try saying something like this. Can we meet in your office? In the meeting say something like this, “the agency is actually required by federal law to pay overtime to people in my job category. I can work the overtime if you want me to, but the company would need to pay it. Does it still make sense for me to work the extra hours?”
If a meeting with your Agency’s officials proves to be unproductive, don’t despair. you would probably be surprised to know just how many law suits are won by employees because hardheaded employers refuse to change even though the rules are clear.
These lawsuits end up costing taxpayers, because government agencies more often then not loose and the violated employee(s) wins a huge settlement in the end due to the Agency’s failure to correct the problem you pointed out.
Remedy: Consult an attorney who specializes in labor law to explore what options are available to you, (fees are usually paid after a money judgement is won).
You can also file your complaint with…
Dateline: Washington, D.C. 