I have done some calculations and feel like my husband and I are not being paid minimum wage. We have been working at our current salary for over 3 years now.

I posted here before, so please bear with me....I'm in desperate need of help and have no idea how the legal system works or how to even find an attorney if that's what I need....


My husband and I are resident managers of a small motel.

We easily put in at least 8 hours of work a day (possibly more, depending on how "on-call" time is treated for motel managers...). We are paid $1500.00 a month, plus an apartment. Even though the employers could credit $563.90 towards min. wage for the apartment...I was told on these boards (thank you!) that without any written agreement as to the apartment being part of our compensation...I don't have to include it in my regular wage calculations. And since there was no written agreements of ANY kind...I'm not going to inculde it!

As close as I can figure, if I compute our hours worked at full time (8 hours a day/7 days a week=56 hours a week), AND give the employers the benefit of assuming we are two seperate employees who synchronize our work schedules so that they can get around the "day of rest" laws as well as any overtime laws....I figure we are being paid $6.18 an hour....I also figure that even if they can get around a bunch of laws by us being two separate employees (ie. we would have to work 16 hours/day before overtime kicked in....they would at least still be liable to pay us the regular wage beyond the 8 hours a day that we are being paid for, right?)

We have also been caused to provide housekeeping duties on top of the managerial duties. This has happened often in the past three years for different lengths of time (from days to months), but currently we are providing housekeeping 7 days a week for 6-7 hours a day on top of the managerial duties which consume at least 8 hours a day over a 24 hour period. We do get paid $10.00 an hour for the housekeeping work. But it's still two people working 14 hours a day, plus on call time for every other hour of the day, 7 days a week. This has been the case for over a month now. The employers are aware of the situation but have done nothing to rectify it. My husband and I are on the brink of breakdown.



Would this qualify as not meeting minimum wage requirements? If so, can we file a claim and recover the lost wages easily through the Labor Board? We don't have time cards or logs of any sort (we are salaried and didn't realize we're actually hourly employees)...but we can certainly account for a typical day here and how much work it takes. I realize it wouldn't be a whole lot to bring 6.18 up to 6.75....but over 3 years of time working at *least* 56 hours between us (7 days*8 hrs/day), the lost wages are something close to $5,000 dollars.

I also don't know if it makes any difference, but they never "officially" hired my husband. The paperwork and check comes in my name only....which seems weird.


Thank you to the wonderful attorney who answer my initial question back in june! And to cbg for my previous post. This place is wonderful!



-Lara

Filing a claim with the labor board is relatively straight forward, however because you are likely federally non-exempt, you would be leaving 50% of your claim behind you. For anyone thinking of going to the labor board, you should really read this page http://www.gotovertime.com/labor_board_facts.html . Also, please note that the labor board can only go back 3 years, but if you sue in court, you can go back 4.

In terms of the apartment, you should not include it in your minimum wage calculation. Howevcr, you do want to include it in your calculations for your regular-rate-of-pay for overtime. You overtime claim is likely for significantly more than your minimum wage claim. You are entitled to both, but based on the numbers you provided, your overtime claim is about 10 time larger than your minimum wage claim.