Are Salaried Employees Entitled to Overtime?
People often want to know if they are entitled to overtime pay if they are paid a salary. Most of the time people people wrongly assume that overtime pay is only for hourly workers.
Being paid a salary has no bearing at all on your right to receive overtime pay. Rather, the nature of your work is really all that matters. A salaried employee must be paid overtime unless they meet the test for exempt status as defined by federal and state laws, or unless they are specifically exempted from overtime by the provisions of one of the Industrial Welfare Commission Wage Orders regulating wages, hours and working conditions.
I used to be paid on a salary basis. Then when the company I work for issued a memo that a 27th bi-weekly salary will not be paid in 2009, I requested that my classification be changed to hourly since I don't supervise or manage any other employee. My employer made me an hourly employee, but lowered my rate from the $51,043 annual salary or equivalent hourly rate of $24.54 an hour to my current hourly rate of $21.50.
A couple of months later after they made the change in my pay, my employer change the classification of a sales analyst who does not supervise or manage anyone and paid on salary basis. Her pay was changed to a lower hourly rate also. But a month later she was again paid on a salary basis, with the same rate.
Can I complain to a labor dept agency for the difference in treatment in my case?