I was recently hired as a programmer on salary. Is there any law governing the amount of hours a salary employee is allowed to work? Do breaks stay the same, every 5 hours for a meal and 4 hour for a 10 min break? When does overtime start if you are on salary? Also, when we are paid for holidays and given time off, we still have people on call. Are we required to work those normal hours before overtime is allowed? This is for the state of Colorado.
Thank you,

Mike

Is there any law governing the amount of hours a salary employee is allowed to work? No, there isn't any for the great majority of employees, salaried or hourly, as long as the employee is paid appropriately.
Do breaks stay the same, every 5 hours for a meal and 4 hour for a 10 min break? If a person is salaried exempt, there isn't any obligation to provide rest breaks and meal periods.
When does overtime start if you are on salary? If a person is salaried exempt, the employee does not receive overtime. .
Also, when we are paid for holidays and given time off, we still have people on call. Are we required to work those normal hours before overtime is allowed? Overtime is based on hours worked, rather than hours paid.

What is meant by exempt? Is this if an employee clocks in or out?

Exempt means exempt from coverage under the wage and hour laws regarding overtime. You can read about exemption at: http://www.dol.gov/elaws/esa/flsa/screen75.asp

So let me get this straight. Since I am a computer programmer and make less than $27.63 per hour and I do not sell anything that I am a non-exempt employee and should receive overtime?

Yes, that is true, unless you have other responsibilities that would occur for 50% of your time that would cause you to be exempt, such as management responsibilities.

No, that is incorrect. If you look at the law, you will see the following:

“and who, in the case of an employee who is compensated on an hourly basis, is compensated at a rate of not less than $27.36 an hour.”

This means that if you are paid hourly, then you get overtime when you make less than $27.36 an hour. If you are on salary you get no overtime. Period. Salaried employees, whether they make $100,000 per yer or $10,000 per year are exempt from overtime laws. A few companies (read "extremely few") offer overtime for salaried employees, but they are under no legal obligation to do so.

As far as holiday and vacation pay are concerned, those are mandated by the company you work for. Unless you work for a government-based company (and as a programmer I'm doubting that you do) your company is not required to give you any holidays off or compensate you for those holidays. Vacation pay is the same thing. The company decides.

You should have a human resources department in your company that can provide you with answers to questions about holiday, vaction, and sick pay. Do not be afraid to ask what the policies are. If this is your first corporate job, it can be intimidating to ask money issues, but believe me, they won't mind. That's why they're there.

Most companies offer a week or two of paid vacation and a week of sick leave every year. Some companies require that you work for them for at least six months or a year before you get these benefits.

I am a software engineer in Colorado and I've been working here for the last 7 years.

So can a company just say our avg work week is 42 hours but we expect you to be above avg and do 45 hours a week if their employees are exempt/salaried (In Colorado)?

If so I am curious as to legal thoughts regarding:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20908975/from/ET/

Could you please not recycle 2 year old postings and in the future just start your thread? It is confusing to the people who have to read the posting. Thank you.

You have two different unrelated issues.
- Most employers can make most employees work pretty much any hours the employers want. There are some exceptions like airline pilots and minor children and some states have certain very limited restrictions.
- The FLSA rules on Exempt classificaition are less then clear. I took a quick look at your article. It says that the rules are not clear (true). It says that rules need to be changed (an opinion, but one I agree with). It says that many employees are challenging their Exempt status and some (but not all) are winning (also true). What the article does not say is that all Exempt employees can somehow be made Non-Exempt under the current rules or that employees can refuse to work whatever time their employers tell them to. The article does not really make the point that many of these lawsuits end up losing. I read the BNA newsletters which covers these types of lawsuites and opinion letters issued by DOL and the situation looks pretty muddy on balance.

If you want to challenge your classification, your starting point is the following website.

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