Human Resource Blog

Salary Labor Laws in Ohio

	HR Management
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I work for a company that has its employees on salary. At first they were scheduled for a 40 hour work week. Now the employer increased their hours to 60 hours a week without increasing the pay at all. I was wondering if there were any laws against doing this?

Probably not. If the employees are salary exempt, then the employer does not have to pay extra when they work over 40 hours in the workweek. A salary exempt employee earns the same weekly salary, whether he or she works 20 hours in the week or 100 hours. This is under the federal law, the Fair Labor Standards Act or FLSA. Ohio does have law requiring overtime after 40 hours for smaller companies, similar to the FLSA.

However, not every employee on salary is a salary exempt employee. Under federal law, certain administrative, professional, executive and managerial employees are salary exempt. Other employees are entitled to time-and-a-half when working over 40 hours in the week, even if they are salaried. (These employees can also be paid less when they work fewer than 40 hours per week.)

Read more about salary exempt employees at http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/fairpay/fs17a_overview.pdf

Use this elaws Adviser from the US Department of Labor to determine if employees are salary exempt or entitled to overtime: http://www.dol.gov/elaws/overtime.htm