Employees get unpaid overtime backpaid totaling in over $300,000 by using employer's own logic against them: 'These are the rules we're just following them'

Brad Dickson • Managing Editor

Jun 25, 2024 6:00 PM EDT

Working overtime stinks. The one upside of trading your free time—when you'd normally be at home with your pants off instead of at work—is getting that sweet, sweet time and a half… That is, if you live somewhere in the world where getting increased pay is a legal requirement. If you're unlucky enough to live somewhere where they never bothered to make it a law, you're probably just getting your normal rate… if you're getting paid at all.

See, there's a secret third option that some more unscrupulous employers like to employ, choosing instead to unofficially mandate overtime—verbally, never in writing—while ensuring that it never gets monitored or recorded and thus never paid…

This was the tactic that this employer utilized, throwing their hands up in the air when challenged by workers about unpaid overtime, saying that "the monitoring [of hours] doesn't reflect that," claiming that there was a certain threshold of workers who would need to report the overtime in order for it to be paid out to anyone… Well, the workers had had enough of this and decided to band together and ensure that that threshold was reached.