Arizona - lunch, breaks, overtime

[chucko]

State AZ: My wife works in a setting with clients and monitoring and documenting their mental health. She has been working 60-80 hours a week just to keep up with the work they require of her (for a year now). She is salaried and a full time employee. She is not the only one with this situation. Everyone works an 8 hour day, then an extra 4-5 hours each night, five days a week. Then on weekends 6-8 hours each Sat and Sun. There is too much work and not enough employees to do what they require. They are threatened they will be fired if they do not finish their logging every day. Now they are taking away their lunch time and breaks! No extra pay for this work or compensation. Please don't tell me this is LEGAL in Arizona! Do you have any advice as to her rights?

[cbg]

Assuming that she is correctly classified as exempt, yes, this is legal in Arizona and in many other states as well. Arizona has no requirement that an employee be offered any breaks at all, and NO exempt employee, regardless of what state they are in, EVER has a legal expectation of overtime. It is by no means unusual for an exempt employee to be required to work the hours you describe. No law in any state prohibits an employer from threatening termination, or even actually terminating, an employee who does not complete the work to the employer's satisfaction, even if the expectations are unreasonable.

I'm not saying it's reasonable; I'm saying it's legal.

[chucko]

Thanks for your reply. Wow. So this gets down to "exempt" and "non-exempt"? How does that work? I thought exempt was salaried and non-exempt was hourly wage.

Also, does Arizona law require an hour lunch break?

Does ANY state protect employees within "reason"?

From reading the threads on this site, I don't see that Arizona really cares about their employees as human beings with lives!

I get the feeling that people don't really have rights regarding the abuse of employers and overtime in Arizona?

[cbg]

You can't make someone exempt simply by making them salaried. Whether you are exempt or non-exempt depends on their job duties.

No, Arizona does not require an hour lunch break. No state requires an hour lunch break. As I said above, Arizona does not require ANY breaks.

There are far too many variable factors involved in determining what is reasonable for any state to try legislating it.

[Pattymd]

You can read about the different classifications for qualifying an employee as "exempt" here:
http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/complian...a_overview.htm