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by tankerdude 2961 days ago
The article references the 996 hours and the title of the article is about UNPAID overtime. If it truly is unpaid, I would walk away in a heartbeat as well. Unless it’s office work, getting tired in a warehouse would mean higher chances of injury and death.

Would you in the US be informed that you are getting paid $20/hr but it stops at 8 hours? There is a reason that the US has laws about the minimum that people can get paid on a salary.

1 comments

"There is a reason that the US has laws about the minimum that people can get paid on a salary."

There is no federal law in the US about that. California has such a law, but it requires being reported to be enforced, and as such, is not very often enforced.

There is in fact a Federal law that covers that.

The Fair Labor Standards Act.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0bd0fa78-f456...

Someone else here can speak to whether the exemption rate minimum was officially raised from the old $455 per week (the DOL was attempting to increase it). You legally must be paid at least the minimum wage unless you're exempt, and then the minimum weekly pay is in force. The only exclusions are for tip workers, certain types of farm labor, and certain types of seasonal temporary employment.

The DOL also recently increased its penalties for non-compliance:

https://www.fisherphillips.com/Wage-and-Hour-Laws/flsa-penal...

(amount made) / (hours worked) >= (minimum wage) is all FLSA says. At tech worker salaries, that equation would hold if you worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It doesn't make the fundamental problem of mandatory unpaid overtime go away.
You are right; Federal law does actually outline a minimum amount for being salaried. I misspoke.

However, from what I understand, the amount outlined in that law has not changed from when it originally was written. So it is laughably low, to the point where it doesn't really help. I guess it's more than the hourly minimum wage, though?