The Other Wage Theft

Philip Mattera -  When we hear references to wage theft, there is a tendency to think of low-paid workers being cheated by fly-by-night employers. That is only part of the story. Wage and hour violations affecting better-paid white-collar workers are also common, and the employers involved are often household names. Their abuses typically consist of practices such as denying overtime pay to low-level supervisors by erroneously classifying them as managers. The federal law governing workplace pay practices, the Fair Labor Standards Act, provides exemptions for bona fide executive, administrative and professional employees, who are typically paid a salary. Yet in order for the exemption to apply, the person must be paid above a certain level. Unfortunately, that threshold has not been adequately updated and is today only $35,000 annually. As a result, many first-line supervisors and similar employees with quite modest salaries end up working many extra hours without additional compensation.