Are you a salaried worker who’s classified as exempt from overtime? Then after October 25th, you’re probably working for free. Because that’s the day when the average salaried worker — who puts in 49 hours a week — has already worked full-time hours this year. If you don’t get overtime pay when you work overtime hours, that means all your time for the rest of the year is effectively free for your employers.
Free Time Day comes with two months left in the year because more and more salaried workers are putting in more and more hours — and we’re not getting paid for it. That’s why here in Washington state, we’re calling on L&I to update our state’s overtime rules so that every worker paid less than triple the minimum wage (about $75,000/year) gets time and a half when they work extra hours over 40.
Find out the day you start working free this year — and then ask yourself what you would do to celebrate if you had all the free time you’ve worked for.
More info at https://www.workingwa.org/overtime