First thing’s first, I am a temp employee with a contract that lasts from anywhere between 6 months and 1 year. I get paid hourly, $15.50. Been working at what I will call the “Three Letter Company” for almost exactly 4 months. This is my first professional position, and it is also remote.
Today I found out my coworker is going to be out for the rest of the week. I’m the only person available to take his shift, since we are the only 2 people working in this specific department.
That in itself doesn’t bother me, he’s a nice guy and I don’t mind picking up the slack at all. What does bother me, however, is how my manager responded to my question about overtime pay. Our company has a limit on how many OT hours you can work per week. As of the time of this post, that limit is 5. Due to said limit I asked her if my “extra” overtime hours will carry over into next week. She said they “don’t have a policy for that” (aka no).
One other important thing to mention is she said the company was on “budget watch”. Also, because of this “budget watch” our limit for overtime hours is going to be reduced to 2 per week.
I work from 7 to 4, with an hour lunch 5 days a week. This would push my hours up to 55 (I think, I’m terribly bad at math and this is a rushed post).
As soon as she said this to me I looked up the laws regarding overtime pay in my state—they’re in FL, I’m in TN—and they consider anything over 40 hours that goes unpaid to be wage theft.
Is this really illegal? I’m unsure what to do about it if it is. Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated; I really need the money and the mere thought of doing any unpaid work pisses me off beyond belief. I never expected something like this to happen.