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Question:

My manager told me I can expect a promotion this month but I’m worried. If I accept this promotion, I’ll make a dollar an hour more but change in status from hourly to salary. Can you please explain to me the advantages to salary compensation?

If I’m salary, my employer can dodge overtime pay and call me at all hours interrupting my personal life. I’m told I still must code any absence during office hours to sick, personal or “without pay.” This doesn’t sound like a good deal but when I asked the other salaried employees here their thoughts they just acted like I’d want the prestige of salary and brushed me off.

It looks to me like I’ll give up a lot of legal protections if I change to salary and want to know what’s in it for me.

Answer:

When you accept a promotion that moves you into “exempt” status, you lose your chance to earn overtime. On the flip side, those paid a salary can count on earning a consistent amount weekly, even on weeks during which they need to leave their work site for short periods due to sickness or personal needs. If employers attempt to dock salaried, exempt workers for one or two hours off, they risk changing those workers to non-exempt, hourly status employees.

While employers and employees often consider all salary employees exempt from overtime compensation, any labor attorney or Department of Labor official can assure you that salary is only a method of payment. If your new job duties don’t qualify you for exempt status, you may remain eligible for overtime when you work more than 8 hours daily or 40 hours weekly. For salary employees to qualify as “exempt” from overtime, they need to fit into professional, executive or administrative categories. You and your employer can get a full description of these categories from the Department of Labor website.