Legal Question in Employment Law in California

If you are legitimately classified as an exempt employee, you are not entitled to overtime. You get paid the same salary regardless of how many hours you work. To be a legitimate exempt employee, you must spend the majority of your time performing, generally, professional, managerial or administrative duties and make no less than two times the current minimum wage. The employer also cannot dock your pay if you work any part of the day but less than 8 hours.

To determine if a worker is eligible for overtime, whether he/she is paid a set monthly salary or is paid hourly is mostly irrelevant. The test analyzes the duties of the worker to determine of he/she is exempt from OT. As Mr. Kirschbaum stated, the 3 main types of exemption are executive (president, owner, etc.) professional (medical doctor, attorney, etc.), administrative (the most common and based on duties such as over 50% of time managing other workers, etc.) and some computer software workers. You can go to the DLSE (labor commissioner for CA) website to see if you qualify as exempt under any of the 4 classifications or call an employment law attorney to discuss.

If you are properly classified as 'salary exempt', you are not entitled to OT. If improperly classified, and actually entitled to hourly pay, you would be able to file a lawsuit for back OT and penalties and interest. If you think that is the case, and if serious about hiring counsel to help in this feel free to contact me.