Salary overtime and PTO on the same week [on hold]

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

I just want to know if there is anything that I can specifically reference online with regards to the following.

Employee is salaried. Employee worked over 140 hours in a single week: over 30 hour shift followed by 20 hour shift where employee had 6 hours of sleep between shifts during "expected work hours".

Employee manual states that deviation from expected work hours requires PTO, and thus was forced to take PTO in order to sleep.

Apparently United States allows severe abuse of Salary employees as everyone knows, but I have a hard time imagining there isn't something that protects the employee from that.

manpreet 2 years ago

PTO is the wrong thing to be worried about here. It's kind of like someone running over your dog and then focusing on how it messed up the edging on your lawn.

There is basically no reason for a salaried employee to ever consent to working 30 hours straight, let alone come back to work another 20 hours shortly after that. I'd recommend setting boundaries with the boss/company about the length of a shift and similar things. However, if the situation has deteriorated to where someone works 50 hours over 2-3 days and the company complains about you sleeping, then you should probably just leave; it's not realistic to believe that is going to improve to a healthy situation.

In terms of legal protection, salaried employees in most states are not signing their life over, but instead agreeing to work around 40 hours a week. In many cases there are complaints you can file, and or grounds where you can sue. In all legal things, save written communication, write down verbal conversations, and consult a local lawyer.