Pennsylvania still pays a $7.25 minimum wage. Its overtime math is better than federal law's, and for salaried workers dramatically better: a state regulation computes the regular rate on a 40-hour week, and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania refused to let employers use the federal half-time shortcut. The same hours can be worth nearly four times more here. We represent employees. Not employers. Ever.
Under the federal fluctuating-workweek method, an employer divides a salary by all hours worked and pays an extra half-time on the overtime hours. Pennsylvania rejected it. In Chevalier v. General Nutrition Centers the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania held that the Minimum Wage Act requires “not less than 1-1/2 times the employee's regular rate of pay for all hours in excess of 40 hours in a workweek” — the 1.5 multiplier, not 0.5.4 The Department then went further by regulation, effective in 2022: “The regular rate for salaried employees who are not exempt from overtime is the amount of remuneration determined under subsection (a) divided by 40 hours.”5 A 40-hour divisor and a 1.5 multiplier.
A salaried coordinator in Pittsburgh paid $1,000 a week works 50 hours. Federal fluctuating-workweek: regular rate $1,000 ÷ 50 = $20, extra half-time on ten overtime hours = $100. Pennsylvania: regular rate $1,000 ÷ 40 = $25, ten overtime hours at $37.50 = $375. Same job, same hours, nearly four times the overtime. Across a job title over three years, that difference is the case. Figures are illustrative.
The Act exempts employment “in a bona fide executive, administrative, or professional capacity … (as such terms are defined and delimited from time to time by regulations of the secretary).”6 Pennsylvania adopted higher salary thresholds in 2020 and repealed them in 2021, and its own duties regulations for those exemptions — 34 Pa. Code §§ 231.82, 231.83 and 231.84 — were abrogated effective July 9, 2021.7 The Department of Labor & Industry now applies the federal salary test: an employee must be “paid not less than $684 per week” to qualify at all.1,8
Below $684 a week you are non-exempt, period. Above it the duties control, and that is where these cases are won. The pattern we see in managed care and human services is the salaried case manager or utilization review employee applying someone else's clinical criteria and being labeled an administrator for it. The test: the administrative exemption.
The Minimum Wage Act lets an underpaid worker “recover in a civil action the full amount of such minimum wage less any amount actually paid to the worker by the employer, together with costs and such reasonable attorney's fees as may be allowed by the court,” and an agreement to work for less “shall be no defense.”9 No liquidated damages are built into that statute. The Wage Payment and Collection Law supplies the multiplier: “Where wages remain unpaid for thirty days beyond the regularly scheduled payday … the employe shall be entitled to claim, in addition, as liquidated damages an amount equal to twenty-five percent (25%) of the total amount of wages due, or five hundred dollars ($500), whichever is greater.” That remedy is unavailable where there is a good-faith contest or dispute of the claim, so it is not automatic.10 The WPCL also directs that the court “shall … allow costs for reasonable attorneys' fees of any nature to be paid by the defendant.”11
The Department's position on ordinary employment is blunt: “Your employer may order you to work overtime. Your employer may discipline or terminate you if you refuse to work overtime.”1 Health care is different. Act 102 of 2008 bars a health care facility from requiring employees involved in direct patient care or clinical care services — those paid hourly or classified as non-supervisory for bargaining purposes — to work beyond their agreed, predetermined and regularly scheduled shifts. Overtime is still allowed where the employee voluntarily agrees, where longer shifts are agreed to and regularly scheduled, during a genuine unforeseeable emergency, and to finish a procedure already in progress where leaving would harm the patient.12 If you are a direct-care employee forced into mandatory doubles, that is a separate violation from the pay problem.
This is where Pennsylvania is weaker than most states, and you should hear it straight. The Minimum Wage Act's anti-retaliation provision is a summary criminal offense — an employer who discharges or discriminates against an employee for testifying faces a $500 to $1,000 fine — and it creates no private civil claim for the worker.13 The Wage Payment and Collection Law has no anti-retaliation provision at all. So a Pennsylvania worker fired for complaining about overtime relies on the FLSA, which does provide a private remedy including reinstatement, lost wages and liquidated damages.14 Act 102 has its own protection for covered health care employees.12 Any site telling you Pennsylvania law gives you a wage-retaliation claim is overselling it. More: retaliation protections.
The Wage Payment and Collection Law is explicit: no proceeding may be instituted “for the collection of unpaid wages or liquidated damages more than three years after the day on which such wages were due and payable.”3 The Minimum Wage Act contains no limitations period of its own, so the period for a pure PMWA claim comes from Pennsylvania's general limitations statutes. Three years is the working assumption; the FLSA runs two years, or three if willful. Either way, waiting costs you the far end of your claim.
Pennsylvania's minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, unchanged since 2009.1 You can file with the Department of Labor & Industry's Bureau of Labor Law Compliance, complain to the U.S. Department of Labor, or sue; no administrative filing is required first. The Department suggests an administrative claim within two years — shorter than the lawsuit deadline, so do not treat its timeline as yours.1
Jack Siegel has filed more than 100 federal overtime lawsuits in 27 federal courts, earned 50 or more class and collective certifications, and recovered more than $100 million for workers, as lead counsel on the firm's cases. Siegel Law Group has litigated unpaid overtime in Pennsylvania. In Bellan v. Capital BlueCross, brought in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Jack Siegel served as lead counsel for utilization review nurses who were paid a salary and classified as exempt. The case resolved for $400,000. Other results are listed here.
Your regular rate is your weekly pay divided by 40 hours, and overtime hours are paid at one and one-half times that rate. Not the federal half-time shortcut.4,5
Generally yes, and it can discipline you for refusing. The exception is direct patient care and clinical care employees at health care facilities, who are protected by Act 102.1,12
You should not be, but the state wage statutes give you little. The Minimum Wage Act's retaliation provision is criminal, not civil, and the WPCL has none — so the real protection is the FLSA.13,14
Three years on a Wage Payment and Collection Law claim; two under the FLSA, or three if willful. Do not treat the agency's two-year suggestion as your court deadline.3,1
Every consultation is free and confidential, and we take overtime cases on contingency — we advance the costs of the case, those costs are repaid out of any recovery, and if we do not recover you owe us nothing: no attorney's fee and no costs. Call (214) 790-4454, email [email protected], or request a case review. Siegel Law Group PLLC, Austin, Texas. This page is general information, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney-client relationship.
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