Hi
I've worked for a small clinical lab for the last 6 years. I was hired as a technician on an hourly basis. The company has grown exponentially as has my position. My title has been chief technologist for the last 2 years and I continue to be paid hourly. Through the years most of the technical staff (due to staffing shortages) had been asked to work over 40hrs/wk without overtime just the regular wage. About 4 months ago an ex employee sued the company for overtime and won. Since then, the director of the technical department has been trying really hard to avoid 40+ hour weeks...since we are now getting paid overtime. About 2 weeks ago he asked me to consider going on salary, to which I replied I would but we would need to negotiate this. His reponse was positive and said he was sure we would work something out.
Now today, during a lunch meeting with myself and a few supervisors he says that as of now we are on salary.
I expressed my dismay and questioned wether this could be implemented without our consent?
Can the company do this?

Thanks in advance for your help.

They do not need your consent.

However, whether you can be paid on a straight salary basis without being paid overtime TOO will depend on whether or not your job duties qualify you to be exempt. That is not clear in either direction from your post.

Hi
My position is considered managerial/supervisory. I maintain the equipment and provide some training and feed back for employees in my department. But this has only been for approximately 2yrs. I also recently found out that the DOL is filing a class action on the company, so I figure the company is now trying to clean up its act. I don't understand is how I was being paid for for all hours over 40 then two weeks ago they started paying time and a half and now I'm salary with the expectation that I continue to work over 40 hrs. without any change to my base hourly wage.
And is there a chance I have to pay them back all the extra hour time I've been paid?

I really like my job so leaving is not an option. But it does seem very disrespectful.

Here is the general criteria for exemption. I would check all three classifications, Executive, Administrative, and Professional.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17a_overview.htm

If you DO qualify as exempt, yes, they can "make" you salaried without your consent. In most of these types of situations, especially when the DOL gets involved, they don't order employees to repay overtime. The reason for that is that, if they did, they would also have to go back and pay the employee for any docked time not previously paid, but would have had to have been paid if treated as exempt, which would be an accounting bad dream. Mostly, what the DOL cares about is, if overtime was required and you didn't get it, they'll order it; and, that you are classified correctly going foward.