Legal Question in Employment Law in New York

I work for a major international company and was hoping you could answer a question about compensation. I work in the IT field and do not get a bonus. My hours are 9 to 5, but I'm given tasks that require me to start work before 9 AM and stay well past 5 PM (daily). In addition, I have a Blackberry and when emails are sent to me, I'm "expected" to respond. I was recently told that I will be "on-Call". This means for one-week intervals (total of 4 weeks per year), I will be required to be in the office from 8:00 - 6:00pm and then on- call the remaining hours of the day (15 minutes from a computer and 2 hours from the office). Others who have done this, say they get calls all hours of the night.

Is all of this "extra" work and extra hours legal? I asked HR what my hours are and they said, "you start at 9AM and end when the job gets done). Again, I work for a MAJOR international company and do not get a bonus. Any help, suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance


Asked on 3/18/10, 12:13 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Jason Stern Law Offices of Jason Stern

Your HR representative doesn't sound correct but I would need to know exactly what you do in the IT field before making any assumptions about the legality of your employers actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which mandates employee protection from overtime and wage abuses.

If you are speaking about a specific International Business Machine company (hint), I can tell you that I have secured overtime wages for IT employees in the past.

If you would like to discuss this further, please contact me at 646-450-3473 or through my website FLSAAttorney.com or by email to [email protected].

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Answered on 3/23/10, 12:37 pm


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