Ohio Unpaid Wages Lawyer

As Columbus, Ohio, and Toledo, Ohio unpaid wages attorneys for employees, we provide aggressive representation to individuals and litigate collective actions, class actions, and individual cases for employees with unpaid overtime and minimum wage claims under federal and Ohio law. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), codified as 29 U.S.C. § 201, et seq., has been protecting employees since 1938. It establishes minimum wage, overtime pay, record keeping, and youth employment standards affecting employees in the private sector and federal, ,state, and local governments.
 
Under the FLSA (and Ohio law), you must be paid the federal minimum wage for every hour during the workweek. Time spent working on behalf of your employer is compensable time, including hours that you spend before and after your shift, during meal periods (when you still receive meal period deductions), and travel time.
 
Additionally, if you work more than forty hours in a week, you are entitled to overtime compensation at one and a half times your normal hourly rate unless they are specifically exempted under the law. When this compensation is denied to an employee, the employee may be entitled to receive their unpaid wages, liquidated damages, and their attorney’s fees.  If you are paid on a salaried basis, it is still a good idea to discuss whether or not you should still be paid overtime because there is a possibility that your employer misclassified you depending on your job duties.
 
We understand that you deserve to be paid correctly after spending the majority of your time working on behalf of your employer. After all, an honest day of work deserves an honest day of pay. Most employees do not even know that their wage rights are being violated simply because they assume the employer has their best interests at heart. Common issues include misclassifying employees as exempt from overtime pay or as an independent contractor, failing to pay for off-the-clock-work, pre-shift and post-shift work, improper deductions like meal periods and rest periods, and not paying employees for travel time.
 
We aggressively advocate on behalf of employees to make sure they are paid properly, whether it be minimum wages and/or overtime wages under both Federal and Ohio law. If you believe you are not being paid properly in the form of unpaid overtime, minimum fair wages, or other wages, contact the federal and Ohio wage and hour attorneys at Bryant Legal, LLC today to discuss your unpaid wages issues. A non-exhaustive list of issues we handle is below.
 

• Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Violations
• Unpaid overtime
• Violation of Minimum wage laws
• Improper deductions from pay (i.e., meal periods, rest periods, uniforms)
• Off-the-clock-work: Employers failing to identify, record, or compensate “off-the-clock” hours spent by employees performing compensable, job-related activities, such as: taking work home, making/receiving job-related calls at home, working before or after regular shifts, taking care of work-related equipment, and job-related “volunteer” work.
• Wage theft (i.e.,reducing compensable hours, not properly recording hours worked to avoid paying employees, etc.)
• Pre-shift and Post-shift work
• No payment for travel time
• Late payment of wages
  • Under the FLSA, wages must be paid “when due,” which normally means at the next regularly scheduled pay day.  “Late pay” is generally the same as “no pay” under the FLSA.
  • Ohio’s Prompt Pay Act also requires that employers pay their employees within 30 days of the regularly scheduled pay period.
• Tipped Employees
• Substituting Cash for Compensatory Time: Private employers seek to avoid overtime by granting employees “compensatory time” in lieu of cash for overtime hours worked or “averaging hours” from work period to work period.
• Misclassification of employees

Retaliation is Prohibited

The FLSA also prohibits retaliation against an employee by the employer. Section 15(a)(3) of the FLSA states that it is a violation for any person to “discharge or in any other manner discriminate against any employee because such employee has filed any complaint or instituted or caused to be instituted any proceeding under or related to this Act, or has testified or is about to testify in any such proceeding, or has served or is about to serve on an industry committee.”Importantly, employees are protected regardless of whether the complaint is made orally or in writing. Complaints made to the Wage and Hour Division are protected, and most courts have ruled that internal complaints to an employer are also protected.
 
If you have been disciplined as a result of reporting what you believed to be wage violations,contact us today to level the playing field.