The Fair Labor Standards Act and Texas state law require employers in the Lone Star State to pay their hourly workers and some of their salaried workers overtime pay at a rate not less than one and a half times their regular rate when they work more than 40 hours in a work week. Employers sometimes skirt the rules by misclassifying their workers or asking them to work off the clock, but this can lead to severe penalties.
The Texas Workforce Commission
Workers who are denied overtime or are paid overtime at a rate less than the law requires can submit wage claims on the Texas Workforce Commission website. The forms needed, which can be downloaded from the website, can also be printed and mailed, but this is not advised. Submitting claims online speeds up processing times and improves accuracy. English speakers should submit a WH-1 form, and those who prefer to communicate in Spanish complete a WH-1s form.
Time limit
Workers who wish to submit overtime compensation claims should act quickly because WH-1 and WH-1s forms received more than 180 days after the claimed wages should have been paid will not be processed. The paperwork should specify when overtime pay should have been received and how the figure being claimed was arrived at. If more than one company owes overtime wages, a separate form for each employer should be submitted.
Innocent mistakes
Employers that fail to pay their workers the overtime pay the law requires are sometimes guilty of no more than innocent mistakes. This is why the TWC encourages workers to discuss these matters with their employers before submitting wage claims. However, workers should have these conversations as soon as they notice a pay discrepancy because wage claims must be filed within 180 days.