The news coverage of employment lawsuits tends to focus on the disputes over enormous amounts of money or egregious breaches of etiquette. If an employee with an annual salary greater than $300,000 sues his or her former employer for wrongful termination of employment, it will make the news headlines. Likewise, content creators derive much clickbait from sexual harassment lawsuits that describe in detail workplaces where lavishly paid executives behave as if they were in a frat house basement, or where female employees terrorize each other as if they were seeking fame on reality television.
The right to sue your employer extends beyond showstopping legal disputes. Most employment-related lawsuits arise from more mundane, “work stinks” matters, such as employers not paying their employees enough. In other words, do not assume that just because your employer is not acting like a cartoon villain, it means that your employer is abiding by the law. The Bozeman wage and overtime lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can help you resolve disputes with your employer over insufficient pay.
Montana Minimum Wage Laws
One of the main accomplishments of the labor movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was to set regulations about fair pay and safe working conditions. Before these laws went into effect, workers of all ages, adults and children, used to work 12 hours or more each day, six or seven days per week, for poverty wages. With so much work and such low pay, workers’ health got progressively worse, and work accidents were common. The idea that workers should receive a living wage was one of the main goals of the labor movement from the beginning.
The idea that workers who earn an hourly wage should get paid a living wage is not new; you only have so many years of life that you can trade for dollars by working for an hourly wage. Despite this, the Federal Minimum Wage Act did not come into effect until 1938, when the Great Depression had dragged on for years, and many wage earners’ financial situations were truly desperate. In 1938, the Federal Minimum Wage Act went into effect, setting the minimum wage at 25 cents per hour and outlining jobs that were exempt from the minimum wage; in other words, where employers had the right to pay workers less than 25 cents per hour.
Since then, the minimum wage has increased as prices have risen, but the exceptions to the minimum wage are similar to what they were in the 1930s. Today, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour; in states that have statewide minimum wage laws that set a higher minimum wage, employers must pay the higher wage. For example, in Montana, the minimum wage is $10.55 per hour. Furthermore, the minimum wage for workers who work for federal contractors in Montana is $17.75 per hour.
The minimum wage for workers exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act is $4.00 per hour. Most exempt workers are those for whom tips are a substantial part of their income. Montana law includes restaurant bussers among tipped employees, assuming that they are part of the tip pool in restaurants where tipped workers pool their tips.
Who is Entitled to Overtime Pay in Montana?
The point of a sufficient minimum wage is that workers can earn enough money to afford necessities, even when they only work 40 hours per week. The reality is that getting by on an hourly wage at a job where you only work 40 hours per week increasingly sounds like a pipe dream these days. Most people have at least two jobs these days, even if one of them is a side hustle with irregular hours.
If you work more than 40 hours for the same employer in the same week, you are entitled to overtime pay. This means that, for every hour you work, beginning with the 41st, you get one and a half times your usual hourly wage. In other words, if your usual wage is $16 per hour, but you work 41 hours in one week, you get $24 for the last hour.
It sounds like a sweet deal, but many jobs are exempt from overtime pay. These are some examples of jobs where the pay does not increase when you work more than 40 hours a week:
- Seasonal jobs that only operate for a few weeks or a few months out of the year, such as Christmas tree sales and Fourth of July firework stands
- Managerial jobs, even if your employer calculates your pay by the hour instead of by the month or year
- Salaried positions, where you receive the same amount of money each pay period, regardless of the number of hours you spend at your workplace
In other words, you do not get overtime pay if your job is, by nature, brief and intensive, or if the work is well compensated, and the work is mentally demanding but not physically demanding.
Montana Wage Theft Laws
You have the right to sue your employer if your employer does not pay you as much for your work as the law requires. Many wage theft claims involve employers paying workers less than the minimum wage, or else not paying them the overtime rate for hours beyond the 40th that they worked in a week. There are other types of wage theft, though. For example, it is against the law for your employer to withhold your last paycheck, even if your employer fired you or you quit in the middle of a pay period. Likewise, employer misclassification is against the law. This means that it is against the law for your employer to classify you as an independent contractor, thereby holding you responsible for paying your own employment taxes, if you do the work of an employee and it is your employer’s responsibility to withhold income taxes.
Contact HKM Employment Attorneys About Wage and Hour Disputes
The Bozeman employment lawyers at HKM Employment Attorneys LLP can counsel you about disputes with your employer over payment. Contact the local HKM office in Bozeman, Montana, to set up a consultation.
