Board Certified Specialist in Labor & Employment Law

There is an epidemic of wage theft in the United States. Each year, Federal and State Departments of Labor recover hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid overtime and private attorneys recover hundreds of millions more in private lawsuits. And these are only the cases that are prosecuted. One study from the Economic Policy Institute estimated that wage theft could be costing workers more than $50 billion a year in wages they legally have earned. See https://www.epi.org/press/wage-theft-costs-american-workers-50-billion/. However, most victims of wage theft never sue or complain to the government because they don't understand their legal rights.

Wage theft is so common that one former Department of Labor Investigator stated that to find an overtime pay violation all he would need to do was go to the downtown area of any city, close his eyes, spin around three or four times, and then investigate the employers in the first building he saw when he opened his eyes. Despite the enormous dimensions of the wage theft problem, many employees have very little knowledge concerning their legal rights to be paid overtime.

Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), most employees are owed overtime at a rate of pay at least one-and-a-half times their regular rate of pay for all their working time over 40 hours in a workweek. There are some exceptions to the pay requirements of the FLSA, but these exceptions are very narrow and limited. And it is up to employers to prove that any exceptions apply.