Are volunteers entitled to overtime?

Volunteers play positive and important roles in our community. But, some volunteers can also occasionally pose a legal risk. In 2014, a school district found this out the hard way when its volunteer golf coach of fifteen years sued it for overtime compensation. The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) governs overtime pay for employees and states that employees working more than forty hours a week get overtime. In this case (out of Virginia), the court ruled that a public-school-security employee, who also voluntarily coached high school golf, was not owed overtime pay for the time spent coaching due to his status as a “volunteer” as opposed to “employee.”