Whether or not you need to be paid for any hours worked over 40 depends on whether your husband is considered to be an "exempt" or "non-exempt" employee. If he is an exempt employee, there is no upper limit on how many hours he can be asked to work. Typically, salaried employees are considered to be exempt from certain labor laws and hourly are not, although this is not automatically the case. Whether an employee is paid on a "salary basis" doesn't depend on whether their pay is expressed in terms of an hourly rate, but on whether they have some "guaranteed minimum" amount of pay they can count on each week. So if an employee is paid only for the hours they actually work each week, with no "guaranteed minimum" (e.g. if you work 37 hours, you get paid for 37 hours), the "salary basis" requirement is not met.Additionally, while being paid on a salary basis is part of the test for most forms of exemption, it's not the only element. It is possible to be salaried and to get overtime. Basically, exempt employees are: Management (the employee supervises other people in their work); Professionals (the job requires advanced or technical training - think engineers, accountants, lawyers, etc); Administrators (if the employee exercises considerable discretion in their job duties). If an employee is non-exempt then all work time is paid time and for any hours that are worked over 40 per week must be paid as overtime. From the limited facts given, however, it appears that your husband may be a non-exempt employee and therefore not subject to overtime laws. In other words, if he has no union/employment contract protecting him from having to working these hours, or such scheduling violates company policy, or he is being made to work this much as some form of actionable discrimination, his only alternative as an "at will"  worker is to change jobs.What you should do now is to consult with an employment law attorney or at least contact your state's department of labor. Either one can more fully discuss the specifics of his situation with him.