Employment Labor and Anti-Discrimination Law Essay

You are an employee at a nice paper mill and want to impress the boss by burning the midnight oil (cut not too close to the wood pulp). For four consecutive weeks, you work forty-five, forty-two, thirty-nine, and thirty-one hours. If you are a nonexempt employee covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, how many hours of overtime pay, if any, would you be entitled to? What would be the rate? Fair Labor Standards Act Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 1938 is concerned with child labor, maximum hours, minimum wages, and overtime provisions. Overtime An employee who works more than forty hours over week must be paid 1.5 times his or her regular pay rate for all hours over forty. Employers whose jobs are categorized as executive, administration, or professional, as well as outside salespersons and computer employees, are exempt. Employees who are not exempt include manual laborers and other blue-collar workers who perform tasks involving repetitive operation with their hands (non-management production line employees, for example). Other non-exempt employees include police officers, firefighters, licensed nurses and other public safety workers. Employers can pay overtime to exempt employers if they want to, but they cannot otherwise waive or reduce the overtime requirements. The employee will be paid overtime for the weeks he or she worked the forty-five, forty-two, but not the thirty-nine or the thirty-one hour week.