Know Your Rights

Because Georgia does not have any overtime or minimum wage laws that currently provide greater protection than federal law, the Fair Labor Standards Act determines a Georgia employee's right to overtime pay and minimum wage.

Many Georgia employees are not aware of their overtime and minimum wage rights under the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA"). All Georgia employees, whether salaried or hourly, are presumed by law to be "non-exempt" under the FLSA's overtime laws, meaning they should be paid overtime compensation at the rate of time-and-a-half their regular rate of pay for all overtime hours (i.e., hours actually worked over forty in a work week), unless they meet all of the requirements of one of the narrow overtime exemptions (i.e., administrative, professional, or executive) under the FLSA so as to be deemed "exempt" from the FLSA's minimum wage and overtime laws. Hourly-paid employees generally do not fall within any of the overtime exemptions (except for doctors, lawyers and teachers). Many salaried employees in Georgia are misclassified as exempt from the FLSA's overtime laws, when in fact their actual job duties or the employer's pay practices make them non-exempt under the FLSA and therefore entitled to overtime pay. All exempt employees in Georgia are generally salaried, but not all salaried employees in Georgia are exempt -- regardless of whether their employers say they are.

Frequent overtime and other wage and hour violations of the FLSA affecting Georgia employees include:

• Misclassification of salaried employees as "exempt" from overtime pay
• Refusing to pay for overtime actually worked by claiming it was not budgeted or approved
• Illegal "tip pooling" or "tip credit" minimum wage violations involving restaurant workers and other tipped employees
• Failure to pay overtime for "off the clock" hours worked
• Compensating overtime hours worked with "comp time" leave rather than payment for overtime at time-and-a-half
• Failure to pay overtime for work performed at home that was permitted (or even required) by the employer
• Altering timesheets or writing off time worked to avoid overtime
• Failure to count short work breaks of less than twenty minutes and/or work performed during meal breaks as hours worked when calculating overtime for the week
• Failure to pay overtime for an employee's necessary activities completed in order to prepare for and conclude work
• Paying overtime at only time-and-a-half the base hourly rate without including productivity bonus or shift premium in calculating the proper overtime rate ("regular rate")
• Failure to pay minimum wage for all hours worked
• Retaliation against an employee for complaints about failure to pay required overtime or minimum wage under the FLSA