Chattanooga Employee Misclassification Issues Misconceptions

An employee may misclassify an employer in order to avoid giving them certain benefits or to avoid paying taxes. It is a misdemeanor in Chattanooga to misclassify an employee. If you have been misclassified by your employer, contact a seasoned lawyer right away. By calling an attorney, you can schedule a consultation to learn more about Chattanooga employee misclassification issues and if your case applies.

Exempt and Non-Exempt Employees

Chattanooga employee misclassification issues include establishing whether a worker is an exempt employee or a non-exempt employee. An exempt employee is a worker who is not provided the benefits guaranteed by the Fair Labor Standards Act, however, there are exceptions. The major difference between exempt and non-exempt employees is the job duties. Every exemption has specific requirements that must be met before the employer is allowed to decide that someone is exempt from the FLSA.

A non-exempt employee is entitled to overtime pay and an exempt employee is not. Employers must pay the employee a salary rather than an hourly wage for them to be considered exempt. Usually, exempt employees are in executive, professional, or administrative positions.

Misconception About Misclassification

One of the misconceptions in misclassification cases is that people think if an individual is on salary, that automatically means that person is exempt but that is not always the case. What makes someone exempt is a combination of several things, including whether they are paid on a salary basis and the employee’s job duties. A person can be paid salary and not have the appropriate job duties to be considered exempt. This means the employer could still violate the FSLA if they do not pay the employee the required overtime that they earned. An accomplished lawyer can assist someone who has any questions about the classification of employment.

How an Attorney Can Help

An experienced lawyer will go through multiple steps in evaluating whether there are any Chattanooga employee misclassification issues. The first thing an attorney will do is talk to the employee about the aspects of their job. Most commonly, these job duties will be determined by what the most important things the person actually does while in the workplace.

Most of the time, the only way to figure out the job duties is by sitting down one-on-one with the employee where the attorney talks to the employee about what do they do on a day-to-day basis. They will ask how their performance is judged and how their production is tracked and other similar things like that. That will determine what the most important parts of their job duties are which will be crucial for the attorney in evaluating whether the employee is properly classified or is misclassified.

With the help of the employee, the attorney can look at paystubs and timesheets to cross-reference them and determine how the person is getting paid. Frequently in an FLSA case, with all the documents, the attorney can see the number of hours they have been unpaid and let the employee know what they think of the case the same day as the initial consultation.