Overtime Pay: How do I Know if my Employer Owes me Money?

October 5th, 2009. By Kristine B

Yeah, it sounds like a bad Whitney Houston flashback…”How will I know if he…” Whoa there—back on topic. Overtime pay? Good question. So that’s the focus of this week’s Pleading Ignorance.

If you’ve opened a newspaper lately—or looked at virtually any news website including our own recent post on 61 companies with OT pay issues—you’ll know one of the major issues in US courts right now is Overtime Pay—or more aptly, missing overtime pay from a lot of folks’ paychecks. What you might not have known is that overtime laws in the US are not as clear-cut as many people think. In fact, if you’re not getting overtime pay there’s still a chance you should be. How’s that? Read on…

Overtime in a Nutshell

Basically, overtime occurs when a person works more than a set amount of time either daily (over 8 hours in a day), or weekly (over 40 hours in a week). Overtime is regulated by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) and by state laws. When both the state and the FLSA cover overtime, employers must go with whichever one holds the employer to the highest standards—essentially meaning whichever one provides the most pay to the employee (that’s good news for the employee).

When an employee works more than 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week—and let’s be honest, who hasn’t worked that much at some point—the employee is supposed to get 1.5 times her regular wage (that’s the “time and a half” everyone’s always talking about).

So, let’s say an employee makes $10 an hour and works 44 hours in a week. The employee should be paid $10 for the first 40 hours and $15 for the additional 4 hours.

Seems straightforward, no? But it’s not, because not everyone is eligible for overtime pay and that is where things can get kind of tricky, to put it mildly.  Read the rest of this entry »

Bank Overdraft Fees…Legal Robbery?

October 5th, 2009. By LucyC

Ever been hit by your bank with surprise overdraft fees, sometimes totalling more than the actual debit itself?  You know—you make a $3 purchase on debit, and the bank takes an additional $30 as an overdraft fee for processing the debit instead of returning it NSF—which would also have cost you money. (So where’s the protection?) 

That practice, of being “enrolled” in overdraft protection programs without the bank actually contacting you, may be coming to an end, thanks in part to lawsuits. One woman in Baltimore recently filed an overdraft fees lawsuit, which is seeking class action status, against M&T Bank in Maryland, alleging the bank’s overdraft programs are in violation of the state’s consumer protection laws. 

What’s her beef? $370 in overdraft fees. She was reportedly overdrawn twice in a 12-month period: a $12.08 charge for lunch triggered a $37 overdraft fee. And something similar happened again the following year. Maxine Given, the plaintiff, is a senior director of finance and administration for the Fund for Johns Hopkins Medicine. In order to dispute the fees with her bank she had to take time off work. 

Umm, just so we’re clear—the bank didn’t need Given’s permission to take money out of her account—but did require her to come down to the bank in person with questions about the withdrawals?  Read the rest of this entry »

Jack in the Box workers most likely get Jack in Overtime Lawsuits

October 5th, 2009. By AbiK

Hey, these are tough times. Just about every business is feeling the pinch and some, like a collection of Jack in the Box franchises owned by Roseville, California developer Abe Alizadeh, are feeling so pinched that they’re filing for bankruptcy protection. “Protection” is a key word here—and it’s the word folks like Patricia Morgan are focusing in on because it’s the word that’ll keep the likes of her and potentially 5,300 former co-workers of hers out of any settlement for unpaid overtime, unpaid hourly wages, and compensation for being required to work during rest breaks and unpaid lunch periods.

Morgan was fired from her job at Jack in the Box in 2008. As reported in the Sacramento Bee, it seems Morgan may have been having an “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore” moment over the working conditions on the overnight shifts at Jack in the Box. Only thing is, she got canned before she perhaps was fed up enough to just walk on her own.

Ah, but then the truth (alleged!) came out and it seems there was a root cause for Morgan’s disenchantment with her working conditions. They sucked. Things like having to attend to Read the rest of this entry »

Man Bites Dog…Dog Awestruck

October 1st, 2009. By Hunter West

Be warned. This story has teeth. 

What would be your reaction when you see a much larger and stronger dog (and a breed that carries the perception of being vicious) attacking a smaller, meeker dog? 

A: Scream.

B: Call the SPCA, or the Police

C: Attempt to pull them apart and stop the attack

D: Nothing

For a man from Saskatoon, a city located in Western Canada, there needed to be one more letter to that stack noted above. 

E: Bite Dog.

As in, give him a piece of his own medicine. 

Doggonit, if it didn’t work too.

Here’s the story, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Early in September Read the rest of this entry »

SunTrust week from hell: Robbers! CO2! Overdraft Fees!

October 1st, 2009. By AbiK

SunTrust just can’t keep out of the news lately. If you believe in the adage that any PR is good PR, well then, SunTrust must be racking up new customers left and right. However, my gut is the type of news SunTrust has been involved with isn’t the run-right-in-and-open-an-account type.

Here’s the SunTrust round-up for the week:

1. SunTrust Bank gets Robbed

Central Florida’s been getting hit with some bank robberies as of late. This past Monday, it was SunTrust’s turn—at the SunTrust branch located at 200 S. Orange Ave. in downtown Orlando. The Orlando Sentinel reported that the suspect, a white male between 25 and 30 years old got away with “an undisclosed amount of money”. The suspect was wearing a black messenger-style bag. Thankfully, no one was injured.

2. Carbon Monoxide Fumes fill SunTrust Mortgage Location

I could make a lousy play on words here and say something about how “at least something’s getting filled at SunTrust” in relation to recent charges against SunTrust for not filling (or more aptly, freezing) some clients HELOC accounts, but I won’t. (oh, I guess I just did—sorry). But this is no joking matter. The Richmond Times Dispatch reported earlier this week that Read the rest of this entry »