The Salaried Employees

Salaried employees are, for the most part, at the mercy of their employer. These employees are under contract to their employer for a set amount of money on a set pay day. The labor laws, in this case, are somewhat ambiguous, so many of these cases go to court or are decided by arbitrators and no one may be found at fault or "guilty" unless the excesses are blatant and obviously knowingly carried out.




Salaried employees are not usually required to keep track of their hours, though for reporting instances, your employer may require that. Some employers do this as a means to measure productivity and will require complex descriptions of the work done as well as the number of hours or even minutes spent on each task. This is legal, though on the side you may want to make notes of how much time it took you to complete this requirement, along with your regular work. It will subtract from your productivity level if you must spend minutes recounting your work every time that you perform a task. It is also wise, if you are entering into a salaried position, that it is clearly stated how many hours you are expected to work during a regular work week. Since you are not punching a time clock or filling out a time sheet, you must keep meticulous records if you regularly work over the number of hours originally agreed upon. For example, if your contract states or you know that you are required to work 50 hours a week, but you regularly put in 60 or 70 hours a week with no additional compensation, then you have the right to approach your employer about it and in the case that you and he or she disagree, you also can take them to court for reimbursement for those additional hours. But, in most cases, it is imperative that your contract spells out the expectations and if you are looking at one or two weeks over the course of a year, do not expect a ruling in your favor. You also cannot expect to be compensated at the overtime rate, though in some cases of blatant abuse of a salaried employee, that has been a decision handed down by the court.



When it comes to sick and vacation days, a salaried employee is compensated when he or she has the sick or vacation days available. By the same token that your employer is required to pay you the set amount for a week in which you worked the set hours, if you do not have sick days or vacation days available, your employer is not required to compensate you for hours you did not work. In this case, your salary is usually computed to a daily or hourly rate, and that amount of money can be withheld from your salary. This normally only happens with cases where the employer feels that the employee is abusing their salaried position. On the other hand, if you are regularly a very reliable employee who puts in more than their agreed upon salaried hours in the majority of weeks, but then has to take a sick day once or twice during a pay period and your employer decides to dock your pay, regardless of the number of additional hours that you have voluntarily worked, you may have a case. These cases are much more difficult to bring, but if a pattern of this type of abuse can be tracked and attested to, your employer may be required to compensate you and will also be required to mend his or her ways.



Yes, it's true that salaried employees do not necessarily receive the same protection as an hourly employee, but it is also true that blatant disregard of the labor laws can land your employer in hot water. For the most part, salaried employees enter into contracts for which they feel adequately paid for the work they perform. It is really up to you, as an employee, and up to your employer to honestly carry out your contract in the way that it was intended when it was entered into.