Wage and Hour Question Triage

Wage and Hour Question Triage

Purpose

Produce a structured, attorney-ready draft analysis of a specific wage-and-hour or related employment question. The skill organizes the question, confirms the jurisdiction and operative facts, identifies what controlling rules must be researched and verified, applies those researched rules to the facts in a disciplined way, and flags whether the answer is clear, borderline, or in flux. It produces draft legal work product for attorney review — not legal advice, not a legal conclusion, and not a substitute for employment counsel.

This skill's entire value is the discipline it imposes: identify the jurisdiction, route every controlling rule to verified research, apply the researched rule to the facts, and flag close calls. It does not state any wage-and-hour rule, threshold, multiplier, deadline, exemption criterion, or computation formula from memory.

Use When

• A user asks a specific question about overtime eligibility, exempt vs. non-exempt status, meal or rest break entitlements, final-pay timing, paid-time-off payout obligations, or leave eligibility for a particular worker or role.
• An employer, HR professional, or attorney needs a structured, research-ready intake of a wage-and-hour issue before legal analysis begins.
• A user asks: "Is this employee eligible for overtime?", "Do we have to pay out accrued PTO on termination?", "What are our break obligations for this schedule?", or a similar specific question.
• A question involves computing back-pay or unpaid wages and the user needs to understand what must be researched and verified before any figure is calculated.
• A question arises in a multi-jurisdiction employment context and the most-restrictive jurisdiction must be identified before analysis can begin.

Required Inputs

• The specific question: the precise wage-and-hour or employment question to be analyzed. If the question is vague, clarify it before proceeding.
• The jurisdiction(s): the state, province, or country whose law governs the work. For a multi-jurisdiction employer, all relevant jurisdictions where the work is performed. If unknown, flag as [CONFIRM: governing jurisdiction] and do not proceed past fact-gathering.
• The operative facts: the job title, a description of the worker's actual day-to-day duties and responsibilities, compensation structure and pay rate, hours worked and schedule, and the specific actions, payments, or events that gave rise to the question. General or conclusory descriptions of duties are not sufficient; the analysis depends on what the worker actually does.