Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”), the federal overtime law, employers are required to pay their employees overtime for hours worked over 40 in a week, unless they meet a particular legal “exemption.” Therefore, the regulations that interpret this law require that the employers maintain time records of the hours their employees work.
However, oftentimes there are no time records or stamps of when an employee is actually working. Many employees merely record their hours for “attendance purposes,” and therefore even if the hours recorded, they do not accurately reflect the true hours worked. In those cases, and employee’s “good faith estimate” of the hours that they work would control and it would be on the employer to “rebut this presumption” – meaning it would be on the employer to present evidence that the employee’s recollection of their hours worked was inaccurate. This shift of whose burden it is to prove hours worked is very impactful to an employee’s claim for unpaid overtime because, if the employer does not have this evidence, the employee’s good faith estimate will control.
So, fear not if you do not have accurate written time records of your hours worked as this will not prevent you from bringing an overtime claim! If you believe that you were wrongfully denied overtime pay, do not hesitate to contact us at info@pkglegal.com or at (561) 726-8444 for a free evaluation of your claim.