Human Resource Blog

Is this legal? Florida Overtime

	Compensation
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I work for a small tile company in Florida. I became their estimator in 11-07. I am a salaried employee. My employers are requiring me to be at the office 8.5 hrs a day, 5 days a week (.5 hour for deducted for lunch). If I have to leave early for any reason, after I’ve worked at least 1 hr for that day, they deduct what’s left of the 8.5 hrs for that day from wages and log it under sick time. At present all of my sick time has been used up, and I’ve only taken 2 sick days. I DO NOT get paid any overtime. I work on average about 50-60 hrs a week. Can they legally require me to be here 8 hrs a day, being that I’m salaried and get no overtime?

Yes, an employer can use sick time in this way for a salaried exempt employee. However, the employer CANNOT dock the worker’s pay, when he leaves work early if the worker has used up all of his sick time. Docking the employee’s pay effectively means that the worker is salaried, but not exempt from overtime. So, the employer may be liable for any overtime the employee has worked in the past. However, there is a loophole here because you mention that this is a small company. Florida has no overtime law. The federal Fair Labor Standards Act or FLSA applies only to companies that do business across state lines, or with more than $500,000 in annual revenue. So it’s possible that this company is so small, that the overtime law doesn’t apply.