I work as a contractor for a Telecom company in NJ. Since the company I work for will not deal with Independent Contractors I have to submit my hours for pay to the company I contact through in NC. I also have to submit my time to the company I am working for in NJ. I was hired to work 40 hours a week as an operations manager for one of their Web sites. Since the day I was hired I became the 24 x 7 support manager and carry a company cell phone and I am called on to work all sorts of issues 365 days a year. Due to layoffs I am now working 50 to 60 hours per week. I was granted permission after 3 years with the company to start submitting for 42 hours for pay. I have been told not to rock the boat by trying to submit for more than that. Now that I have been with the company for 38 months, to long (over 36 months) by their rules, I am facing a lay off myself??? I have been told for the last year that I am the next on the list to be converted to a full time employee as long as I keep my head down and continue to be a good contractor. I must have hundreds of hours I am owed by this company and if they did hire me I would probably be happy. However if they do not do I have any kind of case??

Although job titles alone don't necessarily qualify you as an exempt employee, it's very likely that you do qualify as one.
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/whd/fairpay/fs17a_overview.htm

If so, the employer (the staffing agency) is not required to pay you anything over and above your regular weekly salary no matter how many hours you work, although that salary must be guaranteed, at least $455/week (with some exceptions for Computer Professionals) and they are limited in the situations in which they can dock your pay. In this case, the hours they bill the client for would be irrelevant.

Question? If you only work 35 hours in a week, do you only get paid for 35? What happens if you miss a partial day of work?

Any day not spent working I am not paid for (Days off, Vacation days, holidays, snow days)

What about if you work only a partial day? And does your employer/staffing company offer vacation, sick, personal days and, if so, are you eligible? Sorry to ask so many questions, but I'm trying to determine if they are paying you as an exempt employee or a nonexempt employee.

I am only to be paid for the hours I work. So technically if I leave one day 5 hours early I should be paid for only 35 hours. That said if i leave early my manager says do not worry about it and submit 8 hours for the day. If I decided to take a 4 day weekend i would only be paid for a 3 day week.

It sounds like perhaps the employer is treating you as exempt, although they're also telling you to fudge your timesheet. Tell you the truth, I can't figure out which. You can contact the federal DOL and discuss your specific situation with them.

From what I read it looks the employer is treating you as exempt and is paying you on an hourly basis.

What is your hourly rate of pay?

Also, you haven't told us enough about your actual job duties.

Do your job duties include: programing, software engineering, systems analysis?

In your position do you do any of the following:

(1) The application of systems analysis techniques and procedures,
including consulting with users, to determine hardware, software, or
system functional specifications;

2) The design, development, documentation, analysis, creation,
testing, or modification of computer systems or programs, including
prototypes, based on and related to user or system design
specifications;

(3) The design, documentation, testing, creation or modification of
computer programs related to machine operating systems; or

(4) a combination of the aforementioned duties, the performance of
which requires the same level of skills.

Regards.

My hourly rate is $52 an hour no benefits.

I do not perform any of the technical jobs mentioned above. I am not a programer or an application developer.

I help the district Operations Manage with the daily operations of the department. Jobs like metrics repoting, outage coordination, review of daily changes, and watching the previous days alarms.

I was first hired to document the Monthly reporting process, reporting numbers like responce time, up time, down time, customers impacted....All of the numbers are generated by a programmer and then given to me.

OK, LaborLawNJ, I'm passing this torch to you. :D

Thanks Patty you're all heart!!! :)

The question is whether or not you are exempt for purposes of overtime (all hours over 40 hours).

Basically, if you are a bona fide executive, administrative or professional employee you are not entitled to overtime and you are classified as "exempt".

I think where Patty was going and where I was going is that you might possibly fit into the highly specialized computer field classification and thus be entitled to overtime.

You have since stated that you are not on the technical end but are more of a managerial type.

The determination of exempt vs. non-exempt is very fact sensitive. However, to avoid hashing out all of your job duties in this forum and trying to guess whether or not you are exempt, let me give you some practical advice.

You are currently contracted to the telecom company and stated you would like to stay there if given the opportunity. However, you also stated that you might be facing a lay-off.

At this point, I would not push the issue and rock-the-boat. You should wait to see what happens. If you are hired by the company or offered the position you could bring up this issue at that point and negotiate something.

On the other hand, if you are laid off at that point you can pursue the o/t issue.

If I were you I would begin keeping a log of all the hours you work over forty hours. Under NJ's Wage and Hour Law, you have six years to pursue a claim for back wages. So, even if you are not let go for another 6 months you will still be well within the statute of limitation.

Hope this helps!!

Regards.