CHAPTER 2: PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF WAGE AND HOUR RIGHTS
D. Employee Classification Results
VI. C ONCLUSION
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overtime status by whether a worker is salaried. At the same time, the primary duty test is the most difficult part of overtime exemptions for employers and courts to determine because of the factual intensity of the test. The original purpose of the FLSA’s overtime requirements was to increase both the quantity and quality of jobs, by forcing employers to spread work among more workers, and reward workers with long workweeks with higher earning jobs.34 Overtime
exemptions sought to separate out which workers these benefits were necessary for, and a 2004 final rule to update these exemptions was seen as largely ineffective in providing clarity towards the distinction of which workers deserve the benefits of overtime and which do not (Crouss 2012). Renewed focus on the original purpose of the FLSA’s overtime provisions and of the overtime exemptions is worthwhile considering the confusion generated by the primary duties test. This chapter allows for future research to analyze the necessity of a duties test, but the results of the survey further support the need for clarity.
More research is needed to determine the exact methods for improving worker knowledge, but this chapter identifies several topics within wage and hour law that these methods could target. For example, regularly reminding workers of their rights to overtime pay on each paycheck, or even annually through W-2 forms, might boost worker knowledge on an important topic with which workers struggle—at a relatively low cost to the employer. Future research should examine whether such low-cost approaches could be fruitful for wage and hour regulators.
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Even if a worker can correctly name a right in the survey questions presented here, the worker may not be able to name the rights entitled to them in their own personal employment experiences. While over 90% of respondents recognized that in a simple, abstract scenario, the fictional worker Robert was entitled to overtime pay, their accuracy may not be as high in real life. The questions in this survey were designed to be representative of common employment problems, but real problems have many more factors at issue for a worker to name their right.
Even if they do name their right, they may not be confident in their assessment. This survey does not capture the confidence of respondents in their answers.
Furthermore, with a survey drawing respondents from across the nation, there are many state-specific wage and hour laws and regulations that likely impacted responses. Although I accounted for the local minimum wage, some states differ from federal wage and hour law, for example on salary exemption thresholds for overtime pay. Still, to the extent that this survey did include state-specific variations for local tipped and non-tipped minimum wages, these
differences across states did not prove significant. This aligns with previous literature that people do not know unique, state-specific laws (Darley et al. 2001).
Overall, this study shows that in simple scenarios, workers are adept at identify wage and hour rights. Compared to other studies of objective legal knowledge, respondents in this
experimental vignette study performed much better in identifying wage and hour rights. But the study also revealed that complicating factors that reduced respondents’ accuracy. In line with previous studies on objective legal knowledge, the results in this study suggest that better information and perceptions of fairness both play a role in driving respondent perceptions.
Educating workers on these topics may help overcome the first hurdle of naming a right, but greater public and private enforcement of wage and hour laws is needed to effectively protect
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wage and hour rights and proper employee classifications. Simplifying some wage and hour laws and regulations to meet workers’ perceptions is another potential way for workers to better name their rights. This study identifies topics within employment law where workers struggle to name their rights. By addressing these struggles, legislators and regulators could help workers name those rights, allowing workers to overcome the first step in enforcing their rights.
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