Apartment Hypos

Hypo

Ray, a resident apartment manager at an over 16-unit complex, is scheduled to maintain office hours form 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every weekday. Additionally, Ray is to show apartments to prospective tenants from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. every weekend. For this, Ray is given a salary of $2,000 a month. Is there a overtime violation?

Answer: Yes!

Rational: Absent a written agreement stating otherwise, a salary only applies to 40-hours of work a week for all employees that are not exempt from the Labor Code (see note below). Here, Ray's salary would only apply to the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every weekday (40-hours). Thus, Ray is not being compensated for the 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. spent on the weekend (8 hours). Additionally, this time must be compensated at 1.5 times the normal hourly rate, which would be $11.63 ($2,000 a month / 4.3 weeks per month / 40 hours per week). Thus, his overtime rate is $17.44 an hour.

Note: An employee must make at least $2,322 a month to be exempt from the labor code.