Are you furious and annoyed by your employer’s activities? Are you planning to seize your withholding payment by mugging up on wage and hour laws? Don’t worry! Consider all the different ways a wage and hour attorney could handle it more effectively before you embark on a legal battle with your boss about the hours you were not compensated for and the unpaid labor you were compelled to work. They are devoted to safeguarding the rights of Massachusetts workers, ensuring they are reimbursed timely for their working hours, and obtaining every amenity to which they are entitled.
5 Things Wage and Hour Lawyers Do
- Understand State-Based Wage and Hour Laws
You might have a common indication about how minimum wage and hourly limitations work in Massachusetts. But the question is this: Are you ready to gamble your compensation on it? Every state and county might have minimum wage and overtime protections, and others might be stricter than the federal guidelines. In Massachusetts, the current minimum wage for employees is $15 per hour, higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
- Decide on Your Wage/Hour Claim Has Worth
Your employer may embarrass you, preventing you from evaluating the strength of your claim. A wage and hour lawyer can reasonably assess your case and determine whether it is worth pursuing during a consultation. They might share some complimentary advice and knowledge, such as instructing you on how most employees aren’t needed to offer paid sick time leave.
- Argue that You’re an Employee and Not a Contractor
You may consider yourself an employee under Massachusetts law, while your employer might have denoted you as an independent contractor. Their significant distinction often falls under minor substantive differences ingrained in case law that your lawyer can highlight without a hitch.
- Let you Know When You Must be Paid
Even while you may not consider standing in line for security checks or getting yourself ready to be “work,” an attorney might assist you in determining when you should be remitted, regardless of when you invest your time.
- Negotiate a Huge Settlement
Not every wage and hour lawsuit is required to be on trial. Most of them get settled with the guidance of a skillful lawyer. A wage and hour lawyer might be slipping your case into a substantiated wage or hour suit against the employer, which leads to multimillion-dollar compensations.
Is Your Employer Contravening Your Rights?
Wage and hour infringements come in distinct forms, which are hassle-free to detect, while others need detailed evaluation to unravel. Among the more common types of wage and hour contraventions that employers deal with are the following:
- Failing to offer employees legal meal breaks.
- Refrain from reimbursing them for the extra working hours.
- Failing to provide employees minimum wage.
- Failing to pay employees due wages upon the end of the employment contract.
- Failing to offer employees legal paystubs.
- Erroneously designating workers as excluded workers and failing to compensate them for overtime.
- Failing to pay employees for work-oriented expenses.
- Erroneously designating employees as sole contractors.
Conclusion
Along with compliance-based counseling, the wage and hour attorneys litigate wage and hour cases daily, including class, single-plaintiff, hybrid, and collective actions in state and federal courts, and are thoroughly at the forefront of looming issues in FLSA and Massachusetts wage and hour law. Such lawyers deal with claims every day that many employers with national or multi-state activities have misclassified their employees’ excluded status, violated overtime pay, engaged in “off the clock” work, had erroneous time and payroll information, engaged in time clock rounding practices, and other wage and hour difficulties.
