I worked for a restaurant that did this to me. To make sure I hit the "minimum hours" (when you start talking about hours vs tasks or responsibilities you probably aren't getting into a legitimate salary arrangement) they would have me clock in and out, and I'd get pay stubs with 40 hours (less if I worked less) and the overtime hours paid at $0. They withheld my last paycheck when I quit and stopped responding to my…
As a small government advocate, i have no issue with labor boards. the alternative is violence or unionization, neither of which are optimal in resolving disputes like these in a civilized and efficient manner.
What really matters is how human institutions and organizations shape each other's incentives and costs [1]. Instead of aiming for abstract, intangible goals like "small" or "big" government, how about developing a sense of institutional design and relating that to a set of moral and political values. That way, it's actually possible to debug disagreements, either reducing them down to moral values and hopefully leaving it out of the public sphere or locating actual policy questions with less room for aesthetics and more for evidence, studies and sensible debate.
[1] https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w10481/w104...