Video Description
Hi, I'm Innessa Huot and I'm an employment attorney.
The general rule is that you have to be paid for all of your time worked. But, what we see happen pretty frequently is that workers show up to work early and they do all this work before their shift even starts. Like, they clean up the area, they set up merchandise, and they get ready for their work. Now, we call that pre-shift work, and then what we also see is that employees stay after their day ends and they do a lot of what we call post-shift work, such as, again, clean up the area, complete paperwork, and do any additional work that they didn't finish throughout their regular day. Now, when we speak to workers, they often say, "Well, I guess that's just part of my job."
Well, no. The law says that you're required to be paid for all of this time. You should never have to work for free. If you spend any amount of time working outside of your regularly scheduled work day, then you should be paid wages and sometimes even overtime for all of that additional time. You may have these claims going back three to six years, depending on what state you worked in.
Give us a call and we'll go over exactly the type of work you do pre- and post-shift, and also how much additional time you spend doing that work. We'd be happy to discuss this with you. Thank you so much for watching.