Salaried Employee Rights

When you are working, you are categorized into a type of employee based on your salary. There are two categories of employees based on the payment of their salary - hourly employee or salaried employee. An employee who is paid a monthly salary has a totally different set of rights, terms and conditions, as compared to the ones who work on an hourly basis. These rights are regarding pay, working hours, leaves and breaks. Rights of these employees are irrespective of wage and hour laws. Salaried employee rights imply how the pay or remuneration will be handled. The major difference is the rights that they enjoy and the conditions are different when it is their payday.

A salaried employee is basically categorized as exempt from the Fair Labor Standard Act, under one of the four main classifieds, according to the US Government. At the first level, are the "Executives" who can be defined as employees who have an authority over two or more workers. Above executives, there are administrative staff members (employees), like office workers and secretaries. Above these levels are the professionals who perform duties that require a higher and technical knowledge. Exempt salaried employees are often termed as "white collar" employees. Following is a set of rights mandatory for salaried employees.


According to the FLSA, an employee gets the same amount of pay irrespective of the number of working hours he worked for. This also includes employees who are paid weekly, monthly or bi-weekly. The amount in his paycheck cannot be changed just because his employee performance was poor in the last week. Remember that a salary is usually a yearly figure (for example: US $50,000 per year). To get a weekly salary amount, this yearly amount is divided by the number of weeks in every year. Some employees may get paid on a bi-weekly basis or on monthly basis.


Under the Family Medical Leave Act, salaried employees who work for minimum 1250 hours, for more than 12 months for an employer having an employee strength of 50+, are entitled for paid leaves. Salaried employees can also have up to 12 weeks of unpaid leaves either for himself or for some family related issues. This employee has been guaranteed unpaid leave which means he cannot lose his job for taking a leave for three months either for himself or his family. For example, if a female employee is pregnant, she can take this time off from work, to have her baby.


In many states, you may find that it is mandatory to give breaks to the salaried employees. Surprisingly, the salaried employees of the U.S Government are not given any breaks for having lunch or other short breaks. Employers will have to figure out a break-time that they can provide to their employees, so that they can have lunch. Several companies in the US make salaried employees work for an extra half hour, so as to compensate for the unpaid breaks.


There are many other issues that affect the rights of salaried employees. If an employee is disabled or has a medical need that allows special accommodation as a pre-requisite, or if the employee has some kind of religious requirement, he has been given certain protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act, Civil Rights Act of 1964 (with reference to accommodation for religious observation) or Occupational Safety and Health Administration Rules.

Most of the employees are unaware of the outcomes on their paydays when their employer mismanages the exempt vs non-exempt and the hourly vs salary equations. Some of the most horrible problems in organizations are their methods of calculating salaried worker rights which include vacations and sick-leaves.

Employees need to have a complete and clear information on what it means to have a designation of a salaried employee or an hourly employee. You should also understand the difference between "exempt" and "non-exempt" according to FLSA standards. I hope this article on salaried employee rights gave you a clear picture of your organizational rights as a salaried employee. Take care and happy working.