Oil workers entitled to overtime – regardless of what employer says
When you work for a company, you want to be able to trust your employer. You put in long, hard hours at work, and you expect to be fairly compensated for your time and effort.
For those working in the oil and gas industry, that hard work is exceptional, as many of the jobs involve extensive physical labor and a potentially unsafe work environment. But unfortunately, that fair compensation and treatment that these workers should be able to expect from their employers is not always there.
Oil and gas workers not receiving overtime pay is more common of an occurrence than many would think. Employers often improperly classify these workers as independent contractors, or give them managerial titles that do not match the actual work they perform, in hopes of exempting the workers from overtime pay.
Other employers try to pay oil and gas workers per job, which is also illegal. If a worker is covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act, he or she should be paid for all time preparing for the job, the time spent actually performing the job tasks, as well as for the clean-up or completion stages. The FLSA also covers employees and outlines that they should be paid for travel time to and from the job site, any and all meetings that the employee is required to attend and any paperwork that is completed at home or in the car. Employees should be able to receive compensation for lunch breaks where they had to work, or even for the time it takes to call the company to check the day's schedule.
Instead, more and more employers are reporting their employees as exempt from overtime, citing the FLSA's Executive Exemption. This exemption is primarily targeted at those who have managerial duties, and many times the description of the exemption does not match the employee's duties. Under the Executive Exemption, all of the following situations must be present:
The employee must make at least $455 per week
The employee must manage a specific department of the company
The employee must supervise at least two employees or 80 hours or subordinate work each week
The employee must have the authority to hire and fire other employees
The misclassification usually happens in situations two and four. Many oil and gas field workers are entitled to overtime because they do not perform certain managerial tasks like deciding rates of pay or interviewing prospective employees, or the employee in question does not have the authority to hire new workers or let go of existing ones.
If you feel that you are being misclassified as an oil field worker, you need information. Contact the lawyers at Kennedy Hodges, LLP for your free copy of the Ten Biggest Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Wage and Overtime Claim by calling 888.449.2068. Our experience helping the oil industry workers in Houston can make all the difference when trying to file a wage claim.
The Texas overtime lawyers at Kennedy Hodges represent workers nationwide and across Texas in: Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Fort Worth, Pasadena, Laredo, Sugar Land, Lubbock, Illinios, New York, Massachusetts, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Jose, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Columbus, Charlotte, Detroit, and more.
