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A protected characteristic would include things such as the age of the person or their gender or their race or their ethnicity. Those are factors that the low considers to be typically irrelevant to whether a person is really doing a good job. Most employers aren’t going to be interested in what the person’s race is or their ethnicity is, they’re going to be interested typically in whether they’re doing a good job. That’s where the law forbids employers from taking into consideration certain protected characteristics such as those I’ve described.

The Temporary employees can file discrimination claims, but only certain types of discrimination claims. Some claims require a certain period of employment for the employee to bring the claim. In other words, they had to be with the employer for a certain period of time to be able to have rights under that. An example would be under the Family Medical Leave Act where it would require a certain hours of employment and certain duration of employment to be able to have rights under that particular statute. Many employees can bring discrimination claims simply as temporary employees. There is no time period that they had to be employed by the employer, particularly if there is discrimination based on for example race or age or ethnicity.

Typically no employee is entitled to severance pay unless there is a contractual obligation during the employment relationship where the employer and the employee had agreed that earlier in the relationship that when the relationship ends the employee is entitled to a certain amount of severance.

An employer typically cannot hold your paycheck until you return equipment because the employer always has to pay at least the minimum wage. Some employers attempt to do this where they withhold a paycheck. In that case, the employee can bring a claim for minimum wages as well as for their withheld paycheck. Employer, however, may counter claim for whatever its losses are for these items that it claims need to be returned.

All employees do not need to have employment agreements, in fact most employees do not have employment agreements with their employees. It is beneficial though for employers to at least to have written policies, typically these should be signed off by the employees covering what is expected of the employee in the work place.

Sometimes managers have to be paid overtime, sometimes managers do not — it depends on the duties of the actual managers. The overtime wage law, which is called the Fair Labor Standards Act, has a provision for executive-level employees, which some managers fall within that requirement. That would include being paid on a salary basis and having primarily managerial duties over other employees. However, some employers have employees perform some managerial duties, but they’re primarily a worker, and therefore, they’re going to be subject to the overtime pay requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It depends on the actual circumstances and duties of the employee.

Some managers have to be paid overtime, some do not; it depends on their duties. To be exempt as an executive, which some managers are exempt from the overtime wage requirements of the Fair Labor Standards Act, there have to be certain duties met, as well as the person has to be paid on a salary basis. Sometimes, managers are misclassified as managers when they’re really primarily workers or employees doing regular work and their duties are not primarily managerial or executive. Sometimes those employees can be required by law to be paid overtime.

Workers who receive tips also do require the payment of minimum wage. If you’re a tipped employee there are sometimes what’s called a tipped credit, which means that the poor employee can be paid a sub-minimum wage. A wage that’s less than a normal minimum wage because the employee is obtaining tips.