United States federal law
In the United States, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 applies to employees in industries engaged in, or producing goods for, interstate commerce. The FLSA establishes a standard work week of 40 hours for certain kinds of workers, and mandates payment for overtime hours to those workers of one and one-half times the workers' normal rate of pay for any time worked above 40 hours. The law creates two broad categories of employees, those who are "exempt" from the regulation and those who are "non-exempt". Under the law, employers are not required to pay exempt employees overtime but must do so for non-exempt employees. Independent contractors are not considered employees and are not protected by the FLSA. Several factors determine whether a worker is an employee, who might be entitled to overtime compensation, or an independent contractor, who would not be so entitled. That an employment agreement states that a party is an independent contractor does not mean that this is necessarily so.
Classes of workers who are exempt from the regulation include certain types of administrative, professional, and executive employees. To qualify as an administrative, professional, or executive employee and therefore not be entitled to overtime, three tests must be passed based on salary basis, duties, and salary level. The tests vary between administrative, professional, and executive employees based on their different duties and salary levels. There are many other classes of workers who may be exempt including outside salespeople, certain agricultural employees, certain live-in employees, and certain transportation employees. Employees cannot waive their FLSA protections and cannot abridge them by contract.
An employer may not retaliate [1] against an employee for filing a complaint or instituting a proceeding based on the FLSA. An employer that does retaliate would be liable under the Fair Labor Standards Act Section 216(b) for equitable relief including reinstatement, promotion, payment of lost wages, and payment of liquidated damages. Acts of retaliation include terminating employment, disrupting the workplace, threats, acts of physical violence, and constructive discharge.
Out of approximately 120 million American workers, nearly 50 million are exempt from overtime laws (U.S Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division, 1998). In 2004, the United States was 7th out of 24 OECD countries in terms of annual working hours per worker. (See Working time for a complete listing.)
On August 23, 2004, President George W. Bush and the Department of Labor proposed changes to regulations governing implementation of the law. According to one study, the changes would have had significant impact on the number of workers covered by overtime laws and have exempted several million additional workers [2]. The Bush administration maintained that the practical impact on working Americans would be minimal and that the changes would help clarify an outdated regulation. In particular, the new rules would have allowed more companies to offer flextime to their workers in lieu of overtime. In September 2004, both chambers of Congress voted to block the Labor Department from putting these regulatory changes into effect.
görüldüğü üzere, günde 8'den fazla çalışmak değil, haftada toplam 40'dan fazla çalışmak overtime kapsamında yasalara göre... ha, günde 8'den fazla çalışanlara overtime üzerinden ücret ödeyen firmalar olabilir, -ne güzel firmalardır onlar- ,ama yasaya göre vermek zorunda değiller....
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