Ad I read through some of these, I noticed that "salaried" and "hourly" employees were being treated the same. Within labor law, the law defines those employees that are Exempt (salaried - not under the law) and Non-exempt (hourly - under the law).

Exempt employees are not necessarily held to the labor law, unless they are essentially "treated" by the company as non-exempt employees. What this means, is that salaried employees are not paid for time; they are paid for what they do. Whereas, hourly employees are paid for time spent, regardless of what they do.

If a company requires their exempt employees' time to be accounted for in every instance, as what is described in many of the cases that have been cited, then they are effectively classifying them as non-exempt employees. Labor courts have generally agreed that for non-exempt there is an expectation of performing a fourty-hour week, but the employer cannot enforce this to extreme (an hour or two here or there, or even on regular basis that is missed on the fourty hour week is ok). This law is also what allows the exempt to not be paid overtime (non-exempt must be paid overtime by law) by the company (its supposed to be a bit of give and take on both sides). When the take is all on the company side (with no evidence of give) then they are making the exempt (regardless of position) an non-exempt employee.

I know of a number of companies where this has happened. The "exempt" employee took the company to court and the court agreed that the employee has effectively being treated as a non-exempt employee and therefore the law applied. The employee (and all other affected employees) was awarded back pay for all the "overtime" that was worked or deemed to work and the company had to pay fines.

So, it is not always clear cut. I would recommend talking to a lawyer that specializes in labor law -- you might be amazed as to what rights you do have over employers.