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First off, I apologize for the length of this post. I searched around, and http://www.laborlawtalk.com/showthread.php?t=83485 was the closest answer I could find for my question.
My mother has been working as a Office Manager at a Myrtle Beach company that handles insurance losses for about a year now. Basically if you had damage to your home, and you called your insurance company, this is the type of company your insurance company actually dispatches the work to.
Never the less, due to recent economic slowdowns, they heavily downsized a "Satellite" office they had in Wilmington, NC. When they did so, they volunteered my mother to take control of the office. With as much as they had downsized, and the impression they gave her they made it seem like a few extra hours of work a week would be required for just a week or two until they got the last remaining things out of the office and totally closed it down.
Unfortunately it has now heading on two months, and due to the fact that its almost impossible to close the office due to the transportation overhead they would have of everyone in the Myrtle Beach office having to travel almost 90 miles one way to get to the other office, where they actually still have a surprisingly large amount of business happening, my mother has found herself being increasingly given more and more work for this office that has deadlines and now has found herself having to work almost 60 hours per week for the last couple of weeks ( over 70 if you include the travel time back and forth between the offices ) .
What's now worse is that they are realizing with the downsized office with little to no overhead, that this "setup" has become increasingly profitable for them ( again considering they can't really close it, due to the distance is in the background now ). With this being said there is now the impression that what my mother is doing has now become a full-time position.
When she first told me about this, the first thing out of my mouth was to make sure she was being reimbursed for travel, and if they kept this up to ask for more money, or some sort of compensation. Unfortunately she is not the type of person to do so, and with every recent meeting they have had ending with "You should be happy you even have a job, there are hundreds of people who would die right now to take your position if you made one misstep " being broadcast to all employees. She is afraid to do just about anything at all, other than look at potentially increasing the hours she is going to work as time continues, and this office keeps up with what its been doing.
Again, I apologize for the length of this post. What I am not familiar with, and my actual question is.. Is she entitled to Overtime? The company is not giving her any, and just saying that its due to the fact she is a "Salaried" employee. I used to live in New York, and I was pretty sure that Salaried or not, if you worked over XX hours you were entitled to Overtime ( For some reason I thought it was 48 hours for Salaried employees in New York, but I could be totally wrong, and knowing that detail doesn't matter any more as I don't live there )..
The post I originally linked to seemed to answer my question with the ending being a little vague to me. I don't fully understand what criteria needs to be met to be a Exempt employee.
Also if she is not entitled to the overtime due to South Carolina laws. Does any North Carolina laws come into play due to the fact she is now spending 30+ hours there a week? Or does that not matter, and just where your paycheck is cut from matter?
Again, I am sorry about the length of the post, there was a lot of details that I felt needed to be known to get an accurate answer.
My mother has been working as a Office Manager at a Myrtle Beach company that handles insurance losses for about a year now. Basically if you had damage to your home, and you called your insurance company, this is the type of company your insurance company actually dispatches the work to.
Never the less, due to recent economic slowdowns, they heavily downsized a "Satellite" office they had in Wilmington, NC. When they did so, they volunteered my mother to take control of the office. With as much as they had downsized, and the impression they gave her they made it seem like a few extra hours of work a week would be required for just a week or two until they got the last remaining things out of the office and totally closed it down.
Unfortunately it has now heading on two months, and due to the fact that its almost impossible to close the office due to the transportation overhead they would have of everyone in the Myrtle Beach office having to travel almost 90 miles one way to get to the other office, where they actually still have a surprisingly large amount of business happening, my mother has found herself being increasingly given more and more work for this office that has deadlines and now has found herself having to work almost 60 hours per week for the last couple of weeks ( over 70 if you include the travel time back and forth between the offices ) .
What's now worse is that they are realizing with the downsized office with little to no overhead, that this "setup" has become increasingly profitable for them ( again considering they can't really close it, due to the distance is in the background now ). With this being said there is now the impression that what my mother is doing has now become a full-time position.
When she first told me about this, the first thing out of my mouth was to make sure she was being reimbursed for travel, and if they kept this up to ask for more money, or some sort of compensation. Unfortunately she is not the type of person to do so, and with every recent meeting they have had ending with "You should be happy you even have a job, there are hundreds of people who would die right now to take your position if you made one misstep " being broadcast to all employees. She is afraid to do just about anything at all, other than look at potentially increasing the hours she is going to work as time continues, and this office keeps up with what its been doing.
Again, I apologize for the length of this post. What I am not familiar with, and my actual question is.. Is she entitled to Overtime? The company is not giving her any, and just saying that its due to the fact she is a "Salaried" employee. I used to live in New York, and I was pretty sure that Salaried or not, if you worked over XX hours you were entitled to Overtime ( For some reason I thought it was 48 hours for Salaried employees in New York, but I could be totally wrong, and knowing that detail doesn't matter any more as I don't live there )..
The post I originally linked to seemed to answer my question with the ending being a little vague to me. I don't fully understand what criteria needs to be met to be a Exempt employee.
Also if she is not entitled to the overtime due to South Carolina laws. Does any North Carolina laws come into play due to the fact she is now spending 30+ hours there a week? Or does that not matter, and just where your paycheck is cut from matter?
Again, I am sorry about the length of the post, there was a lot of details that I felt needed to be known to get an accurate answer.
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