Frequently Asked Questions

It depends on whether you perform job duties that qualify you as “exempt” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). Common exemptions under the FLSA include the Executive, Administrative, and Professional exemptions. However, if you are a non-exempt employee and are paid on a salary basis, then you are generally still entitled to overtime pay for all hours worked over forty per workweek.

An employee’s right to a commission payment depends largely on the terms of the employment agreement in place. With that being said, if all the requirements to earn a commission have been satisfied according to the agreement, then an employee has a right to be paid their earned commission under Illinois law.

Yes. Illinois state law mandates that employers pay employees for all earned vacation time upon separation of employment. The payment for the accrued and unused vacation time must be included in the last paystub.

No. Federal and state law protects employees from sexual harassment in the workplace regardless of whether the harasser is a supervisor, manager, co-worker, or even a customer or client.

An employee who is subjected to sexual harassment at work should review his or her company’s sexual harassment policies and identify the proper person to contact within the company. Often times this is the Human Resources department. Employees should keep copies of any documents that relate to the harassment, including all work records and communications relating to the harassment. If the harassment is not properly addressed, then the employee may want to contact a lawyer to consider legal action.

No. Federal and state law protects an employee from retaliation for reporting sexual harassment in the workplace.

Generally, yes. There are no federal or state laws that prohibit an employer from requiring you to work overtime. However, the existence of a collective bargaining agreement or employment contract that places limits on working overtime may affect an employer’s ability to require you to work overtime.

It depends on whether you perform job duties that qualify you as “exempt” under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”). Common exemptions under the FLSA include the Executive, Administrative, and Professional exemptions. However, if you are a non-exempt employee and are paid on a salary basis, then you are generally still entitled to overtime pay for all hours worked over forty per workweek.

An employee’s right to a commission payment depends largely on the terms of the employment contract in place. With that being said, if all the requirements to earn a commission have been satisfied according to the contract, then an employee has a right to be paid their earned commission under Illinois law.

Yes. Illinois state law mandates that employers pay employees for all earned vacation time upon separation of employment. The payment for the accrued and unused vacation time must be included in the last paystub.

A private employer is required to provide employees FMLA leave if it has 50 or more employees on its payroll for 20 or more calendar workweeks in either the current or preceding calendar year.

Any individual with a qualifying reason who is employed by a covered employer is eligible for FMLA leave. However, an employee must have worked for a covered employer for at least 12 months and must have worked at least 1,250 hours during the 12 months before the first day of the requested leave.

FMLA leave is authorized only for qualifying reasons expressed in the statute. These reasons include leave related to pregnancy, birth, adoption, and foster care, care for family members with serious health conditions, personal serious health conditions, military qualifying exigency leave, or care for a military family member with an injury or illness.

Yes, employees are entitled take the twelve (12) weeks of leave intermittently under the FMLA or on a reduced leave schedule if needed.

There is no federal or Illinois state law mandating that employers pay employees severance pay upon termination. However, severance policies are a common feature of employer-provided benefit packages. There are a variety of reasons why employers offer severance to laid-off employees, but one common reason is it is a way of avoiding litigation since severance benefits can be offered in exchange for a terminated employee’s release of claims against the employer.

Employees are protected from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, and disability. It is also worth noting that sex discrimination encompasses discrimination based on pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity.

There is a wide range of conduct that can be considered discrimination in the workplace. Generally, evidence of discrimination includes, but is not limited to, suspicious timing of employment actions, ambiguous comments or behavior toward employees in a protected class, and patterns of behavior that show employees who do not belong to a protected class receive systematically better treatment than similarly situated employees that do belong to a protected class.

No. The filing or participation in the filing of a charge or opposition to discrimination is considered protected activity under Title VII. Similarly, participation as a witness for a co-worker’s claim of discrimination under Title VII constitutes protected activity for purposes of a retaliation claim.

There are both federal and state laws that protect employees against sexual orientation discrimination in the workplace. The Illinois Human Rights Act has protected Illinois workers against sexual orientation discrimination since 2005, whereas the United States Supreme Court just affirmed as recently as June 15, 2020 that Title VII protects employees against sexual orientation discrimination.

No. Many employers use timeclocks that require employees to scan their fingerprint or handprint to clock in and out of work. However, the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act requires, among other things, that an entity must first obtain an individual’s written consent before collecting, using, and storing an individual’s biometric data. An entity that violates this act can be subject to statutory damages of anywhere between $1,000 to $5,000 for each violation.