Now let's a similar study on employment fraud: mischaracterizing employees as salaried is omnipresent in the corporate world. That is just the tippy tippy top of that iceberg.
https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-may-give-fake-mana...
Edit: See comment below about "salaried." Thanks.
It is perfectly possible to be a salaried employee, and to be eligible for overtime.
My interpretation: Companies just hate doing that, because it means trusting the employees to accurately report when they work overtime who are not regularly reporting their hours.
But we were told in no uncertain terms that we were not counting our hours. I'm sure the legal department had approved all of the verbiage and procedures.
I never personally measured my work in hours, and a lot of workers simply reported hours that precisely matched their project allocations, or copy-pasted from one week to the next. My present job doesn't have any of that.
So the meaning of saying that it is not counting hours is as clear as mud.
It also extends to more than one industry. Not just, say, corporate litigation.
Now I am salaried, and am not allowed to put in overtime on my own initiative, but I am eligible for it if requested. The next salary grade up, union rules allow unpaid overtime.