Whether you’re a mortgage officer or a bank teller, there’s no doubt that you’ve experienced long days and nights on the clock. When your laundry list of responsibilities include opening accounts, keeping a record of banking transactions and accounts, and selling financial services, your eight-hour day can turn into nine or ten hours on the clock.
It can also be easy to miss a lunch break to stick around and make sure incoming customers are taken care of. While the customer views your availability as great customer service, corporate wins but you may lose. You deserve and need minutes away from your desk, but sometimes your employer isn’t providing you with the opportunity.
The Carter Law Firm wants to hear from you in these instances. They may seem common because “they happen regularly”, but in reality, your employer is lawfully required to pay you for working overtime or missing your meal and/or rest breaks.
Understanding Your Rest Break Rights
In California employers are required to provide a ten-minute paid rest break for every four hours an employee is working. This means two ten-minute breaks when you work an eight-hour day. For every day that you do not receive these rest breaks from your employer, you are entitled to an extra hour of pay for that day. If this doesn’t happen, you likely have an actionable claim. Wells Fargo’s employees did. Wells Fargo was recently ordered to pay $97.3 million to their California mortgage consultants and bankers for violating this labor law and failing to properly pay their employees for rest breaks.
Understanding Your Overtime Rights
So let’s say you do receive those breaks, but are you still working 9, or 10+ hour days and not being compensated for overtime? Your employer is required to pay you one and a half times your regular pay rate for each hour you spend working beyond your eight-hour shift. Also, if your evenings or off-hours are always interrupted by urgent work-related questions that can’t wait until you are back at work, you’re still legally working and are likely eligible to receive overtime pay.
The financial industry is very demanding when it comes to day-to-day responsibilities, but that is no excuse for companies to mistreat employees. You deserve to take a break and to have uninterrupted time with your family and friends after work.
The Carter Law Firm specializes in workplace violations and employee rights. Whether you work in the mortgage or banking industry, if you feel like your company has not properly compensated you for overtime or missed breaks, you may have a case and should contact us. Please enter your confidential information in the form below and share your story.
