Well you have to realize things vary from state to state, but I can tell you how it is in Illinois.
First of all Illinois has a no seven consecutive CALENDAR work week law. What this means is you can’t work seven CALENDAR days in a row. This applies to salary or wages.
BUT… And there’s always a but
it’s CALENDER days.
This is illegal in Illinois
Work, Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat.
This is NOT illegal in Illinois
OFF - Sun and Mon
Work - Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat (Now a new Calender week starts on Sunday), Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu
OFF - Fri, Sat
So you see in the above example you can work ten stright days in a row, as long as they are not calendar weeks which run Sun - Sat.
In Illinois the employment law basically reads, unless there is a law to the contrary the employer can do what he likes.
Here’s an example:
There is no law in Illinois preventing an employer from requiring an employee has a beeper or cell phone with him 24/7
This would mean an employee is on call basically all the time. But since there is no law in Illinois PEVENTING THIS, it is legal to do so.
Salaried employees have rules. First of all you can’t just take a waged employee and put him on salary to save on overtime. The rules vary from state to state, but their are conditions to be met to put someone on salary. And it’s not just title. For instance, Illinois courts have ruled secretaries can’t be made salary automatically but if the secretary has enough responsibility such as overseeing other admins or is the admin asst to the CEO the it IS possible for that person to be salary.
Now these rules do not apply to union and other negotiated contracts. You can’t contract for things that are agaisnt the law, but you can modify them. For instance in Illinois Registerd Nurses are on a two week schedule to determain overtime, not one week.
I do payroll and what most people fail to realize is salaried people are paid everyday on most payroll systems.
For instance in my last job instead of paying a salary person M-F eight hours per day, we paid them 5.714 hours Sun - Sat. So technically they were being paid on days they never showed up for work and they were working more than 5+ hours M-F.
The best way is to go online to your state labor board. Most have a division called “wages and hours.” There you can genearlly ask your question and they will get back to you. Illinois has and it takes about a week to get your anwer.