I work for a medical office and me and another co-worker are are "salary." We get paid based on an hourly wage but we are paid like salary. For example: I am paid 450.00 a week because I make 11.25 an hour. My co-worker makes 400 a week because she makes 10.00 and hour. My questions are; Do we get paid enough to be on salary and my other question is this, Sometimes during the week we don't always hit out 40 hours. We usually average around 38. Since we don't meet this our employer says that we don't get paid overtime for events that we do. Several times a year we work events and go to seminar and we work 30 to 40 hours overtime and we don't get compensated for any of that. Is this legal

Well, assuming you are not professionals who can be paid by the hour and still be exempt (which is unlikely, because professionals would command a much higher hourly rate), the fact that you are paid less than $455 per week automatically makes you nonexempt ("salaried" is merely a pay method).

Accordingly, you must receive overtime pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek. Each workweek stands alone. Even a "salaried" nonexempt employee need not be paid for time not worked; if the employer chooses not to dock you for the 2 hours short, that's fine, but he can't use it to deny overtime pay for a subsequent week where you worked over 40 hours. For example, in the week you work only 38 hours, legally, that's all you need to be paid for (although you could use paid time off to fill the gap, if the employer allows for it). The week you work over 40, though, you must be paid overtime. Period.

If you want to pursue this, you can file a claim for unpaid overtime with the state Dept. of Labor. How long has this been going on?

for me this has been going on for over 2 years and the other employee has been here for six months. what really started upsetting us was a couple of weeks ago we worked an event and we worked 30 hours with a 1 hour break during that time. We were told that if we wanted to eat that we would have to do it fast. A couple of months ago we went to seminar and starting Thursday morning at 5:00 a.m and we returned Sunday evening at 6:00 pm. When we questioned our boss about it she said we just didn't understand salry.

Well, your boss doesn't understand nonexempt. :rolleyes: File the claim.

BTW, unfortunately, Oklahoma doesn't have a law requiring rest breaks or meal periods.

where can i go and get this information and show this to my employer

http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17a_overview.htm

You may especially want to look at the criteria for the Administrative exemption, since I'm assuming you wouldn't qualify under any of the other exemption classifications.

Also:
http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_778/29CFR778.113.htm
http://www.dol.gov/dol/allcfr/ESA/Title_29/Part_778/29CFR778.315.htm

Also, did your 30-hour stint include local or out-of-town travel?

Good luck!

The 30 hour stint was in town. There was no travel. There was travel for the seminar. We flew out of state and stayed 3 days overnight. She did pay for all of our meals.