Sales assistants at Merrill Lynch have filed a class action lawsuit seeking unpaid overtime compensation. Sales assistants at Merrill are paid a base salary of $25,000 to $40,000, which is supplemented by bonuses from the financial advisors for whom they work more directly. The suit claims that Merrill Lynch followed a policy of refusing to allow sales associates to record all of their hours worked, even though that routinely exceeded 40 hours per week.
Source: RegisteredRep.com
This suit illustrates a couple of points that seem always to be present in a suit for overtime compensation: (1) that an employee is paid a salary does not alone mean that the employee is exempt from overtime pay requirements; and, (2) an employee's actual job duties (as opposed to their job title or job description) must be of a nature that causes their job to fall within one of the categories that makes them exempt from overtime pay requirements. If there is one but not the other, the employee has to be paid overtime.
Both the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and Kentucky law require that non-exempt employees be paid at an overtime rate for all hours more than 40 that they work in a work week.
Lexington, Kentucky overtime lawyer Robert Abell represents employees seeking payment of wages and overtime compensation; contact him at 859-254-7076.
