A friend of mine was a salaried manager for a 24 hour/365 day a year company. His job description required him to work 50 hours a week. However, he was short-handed on all three shifts (one employee per shift excluding him). With that schedule, he was not always able to cover all of his shifts, and the company did not want his employees to work much overtime. However, they did promise to borrow extra employees from other job sites to fill in the gaps, but those promises were never kept. Needless to say, he was working 80 hours a week until other employees got hired (this gone on for months). Is it legal for a salaried employee to be forced to work 80 hours a week so the business doesn't have to close their doors? I know one week he said he worked over 40 hours in three days.

JD :confused:

Whether he was salaried or hourly, exempt or nonexempt, only a very few states has restrictions on how many consecutive days may be worked, and only a very types of jobs have restrictions on how many consecutive hours can be worked.

Nebraska is not one of those states. Such job types that would have restrictions include public safety jobs such as airline pilot, over-the-road truckers, etc.

So, the only other issue is whether he needs to be paid overtime for the hours over 40. If he is exempt (salaried is merely) a pay method, he legally does not; if he is nonexempt, he does.