by Loren Seibold | 17 January 2025 |
In comments under a recent Aunt Sevvy, someone asked about the status of church employees under the law. The question intrigued me enough that I started digging a bit into it.
(I’m focusing here on the United States, since that’s where I have lived and worked. Perhaps others will join in the comments to describe how it is different in their countries.)
The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) defines protections for wage earners, not people who are salaried. So the FLSA has little to do with pastors, teachers, or church administrators, who are salaried employees. Where institutions have secretaries, cooks, or janitors who work by the hour, those fall under FLSA rules: the employer has to pay them at least the United States federal minimum wage (an embarrassing $7.25), give them overtime pay, and a few other considerations.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is designed to protect against discrimination in the workplace. It makes it illegal to discriminate against someone for their race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, pregnancy, or genetic information. In addition to a bunch of record-keeping requirements, it also prohibits retaliation against someone who points out discrimination.
The solution
Of course, rarely does an employer say, “I’m firing you because you’re female/old/dark-skinned”—which means that proving to the EEOC’s satisfaction that you’ve been dismissed wrongly is hard. The employer will...
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