Marion County Employee Misclassification Lawyer

Employee misclassification is an issue that comes up often in workers’ compensation cases. Employees are either classified as exempt or non-exempt employees. The major difference between exempt and non-exempt employees is differences in job duties. Every exemption has specific requirements that must be met before the employer is allowed to decide that someone is exempt. This involves the amount of the salary, it can involve whether they are able to oversee employees and terminate and hire employees. In some cases, it has to do with the nature of their business. By intentionally misclassifying employees, employers can avoid providing certain rights to their employees. If you believe you have been misclassified, speak with a Marion County employee misclassification lawyer that could fight for a positive outcome for you. Work with a compassionate workers’ compensation attorney and know that you are in good hands.

Misconceptions About Employee Misclassification

One of the misconceptions is that people think if an individual is on salary, they believe that automatically means that that person is exempt but that is not the case. Just being paid on a salary basis does not mean that they are automatically exempt. What makes someone exempt is a combination of things including whether they are paid on a salary basis and the employee’s job duties. A person can be paid a salary and not have the appropriate job duties to be paid exempt, and then that means there would be a violation if they are not being paid overtime. If someone is not being paid the overtime that they are entitled to, they should reach out to a Marion County employee misclassification lawyer that could help them.

Consequences That Misclassification Could Have

If a person is misclassified, that means that they are classified as being exempt and they are paid on salary and not paid for overtime even though they might be working more than 40 hours a week. The law, based on their job duties, would require them to be paid overtime. In these cases, that person is essentially working for free anytime they work more than 40 hours a week. If a person works 50 hours, then that is 10 hours of free labor they are providing to their employer that they should be compensated for.

Steps a Marion County Employee Misclassification Attorney Could Take to Help

A Marion County employee misclassification lawyer could go through multiple steps in evaluating whether there is a misclassification issue. The first thing an attorney could do is talk to someone about what their job is. Most commonly, these duties will be determined by the most important things the person actually does while in the workplace.

A lot of times, the only way to figure that out is by sitting down one-on-one with the employee in order to find out what they do on a day-to-day basis. A person’s legal advocate may ask how the employee’s performance is judged and how their production is tracked and things like that. In doing so, the lawyer could then evaluate whether the employee is properly classified or is misclassified.

The attorney can also look at paystubs and timesheets and cross-reference them, with the help of the employee, to determine how the person is getting paid. Frequently in an FLSA case, with all of the documents at hand, the attorney can look at the number of hours that have been unpaid and tell the employee what they think that same day. If an individual has been misclassified, they should work with a lawyer that could protect their rights and advocate for them.