Is This Legal?
One question a worker actually types, answered from the primary source and quoted, with the agency that settles it named at the foot.
- Gig & app workI’m logged into the delivery app all afternoon, but they only pay me for the minutes I’m actually on a run. Does the waiting count?Federal hours-worked rules treat some waiting as work and some as not, and the dividing line is how much freedom the worker really has during the wait. Those rules reach employees, which is a separate question for app work.
- SalariedIs it legal to give me a manager title and stop paying overtime if the job didn’t change?29 CFR § 541.2 says a job title alone is insufficient. The executive exemption asks for a salary condition and three duties conditions, and a badge is not one of them.
- CommissionIs it legal for my employer to say commission means no overtime?Being paid on commission is one condition of a narrow federal exemption, and the Department of Labor says all three must be met at once. Whether they are, for any particular job, is not this page’s question.
- Gig & app workIs it legal for my pay to drop below minimum wage after I pay for gas?Federal minimum wage law reaches employees, and a regulation says the cost of tools of the trade an employer requires cannot cut into a workweek’s minimum wage. Whether a car and its gas count that way is the Department of Labor’s question, not this page’s.
- HourlyMy timeclock rounds everything to the quarter hour. I clock in at 7:52 most mornings and my hours start at 8:00. Is that legal?The federal regulation accepts rounded clock times on one condition, and the condition is written into the same sentence as the permission.
- SalariedI’m on a salary, not an hourly rate. I left about three hours early one afternoon and my next paycheck came up a whole day short. Can they do that?Federal law treats a salary as a predetermined amount that does not move with the hours worked — but only for employees the FLSA treats as exempt, and only subject to a listed set of exceptions, most of which run in whole days.
- CommissionIs it legal for my employer to pay me almost nothing in a slow week on commission only?Commission is a way of calculating pay rather than an exception to the wage floor — but a separate exemption does remove that floor, and it is the one a rep who sells on the road is most likely to fall under.
- CommissionIs it legal for my employer to pay commission with no written plan?It is decided state by state. California’s statute requires the contract in writing, requires it to say how commissions are computed, and requires a signed copy to be handed over.
- SalariedIs it legal to pay me a salary and never pay overtime?“Job titles do not determine exempt status”, the Department of Labor says. Being paid a salary is one of the tests, not the whole of it.
- Gig & app workIs it legal for the app to call me an independent contractor?The Department of Labor says the label is not relevant and that signing the agreement does not settle it. How the underlying test is applied is currently being rewritten.
- HourlyIs it legal for my employer to take a till shortage out of my pay?The federal rule is a floor rather than a ban — and it holds, the fact sheet says, even where the loss was the worker’s own fault.
- HourlyIs it legal for my boss to tell me to clock out and finish up?The federal regulation on unclocked work is four sentences long and says a rule against it is not enough on its own.
How these are written
Every legal fact on these pages was fetched from the primary document and quoted as printed — the regulation, the agency fact sheet, the statute. Each quotation carries a link to the page those exact words were read from, that document’s own revision date, and the date somebody here read it.
What none of them does is reach a conclusion about a particular job. An answer here states a rule that exists in the world and then names the agency that decides whether it reaches a given situation. This site keeps records; it does not decide anything, and it is not a law firm.
Every answer here is inside its review window. Each one is read again on a schedule set by the kind of document it rests on — a live rulemaking sooner than a statute.