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NYC Employment Lawyer > NYC Unpaid Overtime Lawyer

New York City Unpaid Overtime Lawyer

Ensuring Workers Get Paid Overtime When They Earn It

An employer who requires or permits an employee to work overtime is generally required to pay the employee premium pay for overtime hours. Unfortunately, failing to pay overtime is one of the most common wage and hour violations that occur in New York City and nationwide. Whether failing to pay overtime negligently or intentionally, unpaid overtime is rarely a one-time occurrence. Your overtime pay may have been regularly miscalculated for years, or a whole department or the entire workforce where you work might not be getting their overtime correctly. Through individual claims and class action lawsuits, the NYC unpaid overtime lawyers at Mansell Law help New York City employees get the overtime pay they are entitled to, plus interest, penalties and other money damages allowable under New York law.

How is Overtime Figured?

Unless specifically exempted, employees covered by the Federal Labor Standards Act (FLSA) must receive overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek at a rate not less than time and one-half their regular rates of pay. There is no limit on the number of hours employees aged 16 and older may work in any workweek, so long as they are fairly compensated.

An employee’s workweek is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours — seven consecutive 24-hour periods. It need not coincide with the calendar week but may begin on any day and at any hour of the day. Different workweeks may be established for different employees. Averaging the number of hours worked over the course of two or more weeks is not permitted. Generally, overtime pay earned in a particular workweek must be paid on the regular payday for the pay period in which the wages were earned.

Unless exempted, an employee’s regular rate of pay cannot be less than the minimum wage. The regular rate of pay includes all remuneration for employment except certain excluded payments. Payments which are not part of the regular rate include pay for expenses incurred on the employer’s behalf, premium payments for overtime work, true premiums paid for work on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays, discretionary bonuses, gifts and payments in the nature of gifts on special occasions, and payments for occasional periods when no work is performed due to vacation, holidays, or illness.

How Do New York Employers Violate Overtime Rules?

Common pay-related violations include, but are not limited to:

  • Misclassification as exempt from overtime
  • “Off-the-clock” work
  • Improper OT calculation methods
  • Failure to pay compensable time (travel; donning/doffing; on-call; training)
  • Minimum wage violations
  • Failure to provide true meal and rest breaks
  • Vacation forfeitures
  • Improper wage deductions / “charge backs”
  • Failure to reimburse employees for expenses / uniforms
  • Improper classification as an independent contractor

Who Is Exempt From Overtime in New York?

Most employees are covered by overtime rules under the FLSA and New York labor law. However, some exceptions do exist. The following workers are exempt from the requirement to receive overtime pay:

  • Executive, administrative and professional employees (the white-collar exemptions)
  • Outside salespeople
  • Individuals working for a federal, state, or municipal government
  • Farm laborers
  • Certain volunteers, interns and apprentices
  • Taxicab drivers
  • Members of religious orders
  • Certain individuals working for religious or charitable institutions
  • Camp counselors
  • Individuals working for a fraternity, sorority, student or faculty association
  • Part-time baby sitters

Except for the occupations listed above, all employees in New York are covered by the state’s overtime law. An “employee” under New York Labor Law is “any individual employed or permitted to work by an employer in any occupation,” excepting those listed above. Also, government employers do not have to pay overtime, but overtime does cover charter schools, private schools, not-for-profit corporations and non-teachers working for school districts.

When workers are exempt from overtime under FLSA but covered under New York’s overtime rules, they receive overtime at one and a half times the applicable New York minimum wage, rather than one and a half times their regular rate of pay as required under the FLSA. However, these employees could receive overtime at a higher rate by agreement with their employer or through their employment contract.

Have You Been Denied Overtime in New York City? Call Mansell Law for Help.

If you believe that you have not been receiving overtime pay that you are entitled to, call Mansell Law at 646-921-8900 for a free consultation with a team of skilled and knowledgeable New York employment lawyers. You can recover back unpaid wages, but only for a certain number of years, and then they are gone forever. So act now by calling our law firm for your free, initial consultation.

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