I live in Oklahoma and I was recently demoted from my salary position where I worked 12hr days, 5 days on then 5 days off, to regular 8hr days, 5 days a week. When I was on Salary I got paid bi-monthly at a rate of $1000

My problem is that when they switched me from salary to hourly it was in the middle of a pay period and I dont think that they compensated me fairly for the Salary days that I worked.

The way they figured my salary pay was they took my gross pay ($1000) and divided it by the number of days in the pay period. In this case it was 16 days to figure out how much my pay would be per day, then multiplied that by the actual number of days I worked, which was 3 days.

My argument was that I am never actually scheduled to work 16 days in a 16 day period. (If for some reason I have to take a day off, I am required to make up the day up) They should have either figured out how many days I work in a year multiplyed it by how many hrs work in day(12) divide that by 24 (which is how many times I get paid in a year), which gives you 91.25 hrs per pay period. Then take my gross bi-monthly pay of $1000 and divid it by 91.25hrs to get my pay per hour. On my pay stub that I recieve twice a month they have averaged out that I work 86.24hr a pay period at $1000. So at the very least I feel like they should use that calculation to figure out how much I get paid an hour and pay me for the actual hours I worked during the days that they are counting as my salary paid days


They say that their calculations are correct because that is what salary means, that weather I work or not on any given day I am paid the same amount.

So legally if you are switched from salary to hourly pay within a pay period, how should your salary pay be calculated?

The FLSA recommended method (although there are several) is to prorate your salary based on the number of available working days at that salary in the pay period to the number of thos available days you actually did work. The hourly method is OK as well.

However, I agree with you. When you present this information to the company, what do they say?

That their calculations were correct and they weren't going to change it. Not only that but when they did the calculations they gave me my entire salary pay in my gross income and then took all my taxes and 401k deductions etc out before they did the proration from the salary pay, so they were way off scale.

So it doesn't matter weather I have a set work schedule or not?

I was also looking at the FLSA and it talked about "salary for fluctuating hours," I wasn't quite sure weather my shift counted as that or not. Since I don't work the same number of hours in a week. If that is what my salary is considered I could atleast go to them with a reasonable defence.

You know, one thing we haven't determined here. You say you were "salaried", however we don't know if you were exempt or nonexempt. This may change my answer somewhat.

And, are you still paid a "salary"? Or are you paid by the hour?

I'm not 100% positive, but I believe non-exempt. From what I've read about the difference between the 2 that would be my guess. I wasn't a superviosr of any kind, I just to tech support. I don't make decisions that affect the overall business in any capacity.

And no I'm not salaried any more, they changed me to hourly pay and a different schedule.

Well, you probably aren't going to win this one, EXCEPT for the fact that your taxes were based on your salary BEFORE it was pro-rated. That's just stupid and that one I would fight about.

Thank you very much, I kinda figured that there wasn't a whole lot I could do about it unfortunetly.

I found out for sure that I'm considered non-exempt, so that lead me to an overtime question. Since I worked 5days on and 5days off, and 12 hrs for every day that I worked, should they have been paying me overtime for those weeks I work more than 40hrs? Or can they consider a work week anything other than 7 days?

Wage and hour laws require that the employer set the 7-consecutive day period that is the workweek. It must begin on a time and date certain. That is the period on which overtime is based. So, yes, anything in excess of 40 hours in that 7-day period must be paid at 1.5.