“Am I being underpaid?”
This is a question that many workers in Ohio – minimum wage earners in particular – find themselves asking at some point in their career. It is not surprising, considering the fact that wage and hour violations are rampant in Ohio and hundreds of thousands of workers are cheated out of their hard-earned wages every year.
This is why the question ‘am I being underpaid’ gains significance. Unless you find out whether you are being ripped off by your employer, you cannot take the necessary legal action to recover the wages you are owed.
How do you find out if you are being underpaid by your employer? Let us take a look.
If you are wondering ‘am I being underpaid’, this is the first thing you need to find out. One of the common ways employers in Ohio underpay their employees is by misclassifying them as exempt employees or independent contractors.
If you are classified as an exempt employee or independent contractor, your employer is not required to pay you overtime wages. It allows them to profit off the additional effort you put in without compensating you for it.
Does your employer ask you to perform work-related activities before you clock in or after you clock out? If so, you are most certainly being underpaid by your employer, as the off-the-clock work you put in might not be counted as work hours.
If you are asking yourself ‘am I being underpaid’, you need to find out whether your employer is making any kind of irregular deductions from your paycheck.
Under Ohio labor law, employers are allowed to make deductions for work-related expenses (uniform and tools) and losses caused by employees (cash register shortage or damages to the employer’s property) only as long as the employee’s hourly rate of pay does not fall below the state-mandated minimum wage, which is $8.70 per hour.
For instance, if you are paid $10 per hour, and if your employer deducts $3 for tools and supplies, you will only end up with $7 per hour, which is illegal. In this case, your employer is only allowed to deduct $1.30.
Many employers in Ohio, however, do not follow the law and make deductions for all kinds of work-related expenses, as a result of which their employees end up earning sub-minimum wages.
If you are wondering whether you are being underpaid or deprived of benefits by your employer, contact the wage and hour attorneys at Scott & Winters today.
Our attorneys are as empathetic as they are aggressive. We can provide you with personalized legal representation and fight hard to recover every penny you are owed. We take pride in the fact that we have recovered millions in unpaid wages for thousands of blue-collar workers over the years.
Call us today at 216-912-2221 or write to us online to schedule a free and confidential consultation with one of our Ohio wage and hour attorneys.
