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My question involves labor and employment law for the state of:
Missouri.

So my questions are:
1. Can an employer force overtime, and if I refuse, can they legally fire me for that?
With the exception of a few occupations (e.g. airline pilots, truck drivers, etc) there is no limit on the number of hours that an employer may have you work in a given week. A few states have a laws that require an employer to give you one day off (a day of rest) in 7 days, but Missouri does not appear to be one of them. In any event, no law prohibits an employer from having an employer work six days a week for eight hours each day other than those limits set on the hours of work for a few occupations. Bottom line, your employer almost certainly may schedule you for those six days and if you refuse the employer may legally terminate your employment. Of course, if you work over 40 hours in the work week you are entitled to overtime pay if you are a nonexempt employee.

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If one is yes:

2.Can an employer legally manipulate your schedule so that you work more than 40 hours in a 7 day period with no overtime pay, but "technically" not overtime because of when their work week starts?
Yes. Missouri does not have its own minimum wage law, so it is just the federal minimum wage law that applies here. All that matters under federal law is the hours worked in a “work week.” A work week is is a fixed and regularly recurring period of 168 hours — seven consecutive 24-hour periods. The employer is free to set the work week it wants to use. In your case, it is Friday to the following Thursday. Once established, whether you are due overtime is determined by looking at whether you worked over 40 hours in that established work week, i.e. that Friday to Thursday period. The fact that you also worked a day before that work week started or a day after it ended doesn’t count. In your sample work schedule, you did not work more than 40 hours in any one Friday to Thursday work week period, and thus would not get overtime pay.