Under the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, as well as Florida law, many employees are legally entitled to both a minimum wage, as well as overtime pay.  There are a number of exceptions – for example, the law does not apply to all employers, or to all employees – but these exceptions are highly technical, and it’s not always 100% clear whether the exception applies. 

As an example, the Fair Labor Standards Act doesn’t apply to “exempt” workers. Often, this means that managers are not protected by the law.  But merely calling an employee a “manager” doesn’t automatically make them exempt. Employers make decisions about who is, and is not, exempt, but the employer doesn’t always get the answer to this question right.  An employer may assume an employee is “exempt”, but a court may disagree.  Usually, in deciding whether an employee is truly “exempt”, a court will consider whether the employee supervises other people, and whether the employee is required to use his or her “independent judgment” in performing the job (as opposed to merely following the employer’s instructions).

If the employer categorizes an employee is “exempt”, and a court later rules that the employee was not “exempt”, the employer may have violated the law if, for example, the employer required the employee to work “off the clock” or without overtime pay. 

Successful wage and hour claims generally allow an employee to recover double back pay, plus their attorney’s fees and court costs.   With large employers, if one employee is misclassified, usually all other employees performing the same job duties are also misclassified.  In these circumstances, an attorney might file a class action on behalf of all employees.