Are Companies Required to Pay Overtime and Allow Paid Sick Leave

This might seem a little off topic of my usual posts but I wanted to see what you thought about this question, and because one of you is probably an expert on this topic and can answer my question definitively. Heres the scenario: My wife is a full-time graphic artist for a company. She is a regular employee (receives a W2) and typically works a standard 40 hour week. She also is able to work from home full-time. She may go into her office one a month for a short meeting, but most months she never leaves the living room. From the beginning, we have felt that her company is taking advantage of her because she has worked more than 40 hours every week and has received no overtime or compensatory pay or time off for the extra hours worked. She has also not been given a sick day policy so it has always been a very vague question of whether she would be able to actually take a paid sick day from her work. And her boss puts insane pressure on her to not take a sick day “because she works from home”. While this is true and she does work in her pajamas, sometimes you just have to take a day off because you are sick.

So that is the scenario. I am really hoping someone has some expertise they can lend to our situation because all the information we can find is very confusing. We have checked out the Department of Labor’s website: http://www.dol.gov/ and they seem to be fairly clear about sick days. The company is not required to pay for sick days, but they are required to give up to 10 weeks off in unpaid time under FMLA. But they are very vague on whether or not an employee can be considered Exempt or Non-Exempt from overtime compensation.

I would love to hear your feedback!

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