Working off the clock/more hours for less pay = the new normal?

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

I've always felt that the most vital, important and set in stone labor law of them all is: Employees MUST be paid for every minute worked.

It sounds so simple, yet companies have been slowly chipping away at this golden rule in more ways than you might think.

This article goes into detail about tricks companies use to get more work out of their employees for either the same pay or sometimes even less pay, including:

- Workers being forced to work off the clock

- Overtime exempt "managers" being given virtually no managerial work and instead used to stock shelves and run registers for most of their work time, thus eliminating the need for hourly cashiers.

- Employers refusing to compensate employees for work contributions on a mobile device such a cell phone or Ipad. Imagine for example, if your company expected you to be reachable by phone practically 24/7 but only paid you for the time you were actually at a job site and "on the clock".

The article does mention that employees are starting to fight back against some of these abuses, but it's quite an uphill battle.

Companies are quite creative with how they stretch payroll. For example consider an exempt "manager" who has no actual authority and earns $24000 a year but is made to work 60 hours a week (because the company doesn't have to pay him overtime).

Even though he's making 24k, he's still basically earning minimum wage because of all the hours he has to put in.

The article also mentions a tactic used by IBM (and also by other companies I'm sure) where they reclassified certain employees from salaries to hourly but cut their base pay in order to cover expected overtime. In other words, they cut the pay of the workers so the same employees could work the same hours for the same pay only under an hourly status instead of salaried. This of course negated any gain the employees would have made by being reclassified.

I've personally seen two instances myself of companies playing fast and loose with OT requirements and labor laws:

At Gamestore, we had a strict "No OT" policy. Managers could and in fact were disciplined if they did the schedule in such a way that caused employees to run into OT. If an employee put in over 40 hours one week, the extra hours were rolled into the next weeks payroll and the schedule adjusted so that said employee would not go over 40 hours for any given week. In one instance an employee had 41.33 hrs logged on a certain week. When finalizing payroll that week, I rolled it back to 40 as directed by my manager and left a note saying 1.33 hrs of payroll needed to be added to the employee for the next week. I had no idea this was illegal until a friend told me it was.

At the sandwich shop, our genius owner implemented two rules that seemed to conflict with each other:

- All closing duties MUST be completed 100% every day, no exceptions
- All employees MUST be clocked out by 9:15 PM (the shop closed at 9)

I'm sure you can see the problem. Many days it wasn't possible to fulfill both requirements. I remember one night working with coworker K. We'd had a late rush and though I was only scheduled until 10 I stayed (on the clock) until 10:15 to help her out but after that of course I had to clock out. I watched as coworker K clocked BOTH of us out at 10:15. She ended up staying an extra THIRTY FIVE MINUTES to finish out all the closing duties. She asked me to stay and help her but I just wasn't going to do it off the clock.

I know I should have said something to the owner but he was a major league jerk who probably wouldn't have given a crap anyway.

The sad thing is my coworker K decided to stay behind because she needed the job so badly and thought the owner would fire her if she left before all the closing work was done even though we were required to clock out at 10:15.

This is completely ridiculous and it saddens to me to see companies becoming more and more creative with ways to skirt labor laws and screw employees while at the same time squeezing as much work out of them as they possibly can.

There have been multiple threads on CS about employees who have either been directly asked or strongly encouraged to work off the clock, most often in relation to a closing shift. These aren't isolated incidents. This is becoming a disturbing new trend that shows no signs of abating.

[EricKei]

It may have been a different era or simply different people controlling it -- when I was at GS, a worker who got 40 hours 15 minutes on the clock in one week was simply terminated for 'stealing' from the company. The managers would all get reamed, too, incuding those not present. When closing, we often spent time finishing up manual chores like trash and stuff off the clock for the reasons listed above, as well.

PS - As I've mentioned before on CS and perhaps here -- this is something I've had *AHEM* very good reason to research with a prior employer: Even if a worker "willingly" works off the clock, it is legally considered the same as being forced to do so. All that matters is that unpaid work was performed.

[Teysa]

I can remember getting chewed out at a job because I had something like six minutes of overtime. You would have thought it was six hours the way they were acting.

[Dreamstalker]

The Jerk had me working off the clock semiregularly. I would get chewed out if I stayed punched in one minute past my scheduled 3 hours to finish something, and one day I discovered that he had been clocking me out if I had to go to the post office during my shift.

The time clock there was a stupidly simple Windows program on the register that was far too easy to abuse; all you had to do was highlight an employee's name and click "Punch In/Out". No verification that the person punching in was actually present...and also far too easy to alter times (which Night Manager caught him doing one day).

[Ginger Tea]

We don't have a clocking in machine (no idea why) we sign out (sometimes unsupervised) in a book in the office, so it's all a bit of an honour system.

One woman was working through her lunch break and instead of signing it N/L for the time she left or adding that half hour to her shift, one supervisor just signed her out and payroll would automatically deduct that half hour unpaid lunch break.
When she told me this I told her she should have insisted on the N/L being done (or the time shift), but as this day involved her working by herself unsupervised, she had the next option put forwards to her, claim that half hour back by taking it easy or down tools for 10 minutes at a time here and there.
A few days later it was gone 9 almost 10 past and I was going to sign out for 9:15 and the supervisor had already put me and the same woman down for 9 on the dot, even though we were workig right up until that 10 or so minute mark, I promptly changed it for both of us saying we work we get paid.

Every once in a while the same supervisor from the last paragraph pitches a fit if we work past 8 on the evening shift (considering when we first got the new drops some people were finishing at midnight the first week only to then come back in at 6 the next day), phrases like "I do have a life outside of here you know" are banded about, thing is sometimes we have had a morning drop added to our work load due to a dispatch issue resulting in a van being out the door ASAP, we didn't decide to just do extra work for the money, although under the uncertain times ahead for us (we have another anouncement monday but they will probably tell us they have not yet made up their minds) every penny counts.

So you might think that this guy when on the morning shift is out the door as soon as humanly possible, given that he is salaried and not hourly like us drones.
Nope, some days he is still here at 3 or 4pm after starting a little before 5am, doesnt mind hours of 'unpaid' work in the afternoon but gets all antsy at 5 mins of evening time.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I used to get that problem back in the pet store days. The pet store was in the middle of a garden centre, and every single person in that garden centre was paid fixed wages; ie, you're down to work an eight hour shift, you get paid for eight hours.

Never mind that due to a couple of Looky Loos refusing to leave the store, you ended up working twenty minutes past your quitting time. Never mind that you had to serve customers who dawdled over their shopping and were still buggering about after closing time. Basically, everyone except the boss, the supervisor and the manager ended up doing forced overtime cuz of the fixed hours pay. Needless to say, we were all out of there as soon as we could and no-one ever showed up early or did anything extra, meaning that the various departments were nearly always in chaos early in the morning cuz anything which could be left, wasn't done in the evening due to wanting to make the time you worked off the clock as short as possible.

I eventually left there, despite the fact that I loved the job, cuz they weren't paying me enough.

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

I would be remiss to not point out that this is not only an American problem. You'll notice two replies on this thread are from UK folks. Oftentimes we think that other countries with much stronger labor laws have far fewer issues with this kind of thing but that doesn't seem to be the case.

[RedRoseSpiral]

Walmart got sued for this in a class action lawsuit about 5 years ago. I got a cut of the settlement. While I did get paid for extra work I did, they "strongly suggest" clocking out for lunch and going back on the floor as soon as you were done eating without clocking back in.

[Andara Bledin]

When you get down to it, people are people all around the world.

Customs and traditions might differ, but greed and miserliness is universal around the globe.

I'm an ornery one. If I were to be hit with an employer trying to either make me work off the clock or other hinkie crap with my pay, I'd be making trouble. I'd start subtle, but if it didn't correct itself, I'd be gone, after gathering evidence for the local labor board.

Thankfully, I've never had an employer try that with me, even the crappiest ones. I had one not pay me at all, but he was a colossal idiot.

Walmart got sued for this in a class action lawsuit about 5 years ago.

Walmart's been sued multiple times for a variety of labor violations. It appears that the company line is to screw the employee as much as possible, and various area managers put that into effect in varying strengths. Apparently some are pretty great to work for, but some are utter shitholes of employee abuse.

^-.-^

[fireheart17]

In retrospect, I should have said something to the labor board about the few times I'd heard employees clocking out and then working for another twenty to thirty minutes because the store manager would refuse overtime.

[Panacea]

I don't work off the clock. Ever. I had a nurse manager suggest it to me one day when I had to stay late to finish charting. My response to her was, "that's illegal," and I turned back to what I was doing without further comment.

My first nursing employer used to doctor time cards all the time to avoid paying OT. At the time I was too inexperienced to know what to do; my colleagues ended up taking him to court over it and a couple of years later I got a check for the lost hours (several hundred bucks as I recall). Later, I didn't put up with this.

In bad economic times like these many employees feel trapped. When things get better they fight back, and they are started to now. I've read several articles about bank workers for BoA and Wells Fargo suing their employers for over time and lost wages for being forced to work off the clock.

[EricKei]

phrases like "I do have a life outside of here you know" are banded about

I have had supervisors who honestly seem dumbfounded by this concept. As in, deer-in-the-headlights look, and sometimes even an admonition that I "need to do something about that" and/or "figure out where my priorities lie". I did. ^_^ Muhahahaha.

...and also far too easy to alter times (which Night Manager caught him doing one day).

My first nursing employer used to doctor time cards all the time to avoid paying OT.

To both -- If yer in the US (yes, this happened to me as well), not only is this illegal, but I believe it's considered payroll fraud, which (iirc) makes it a Federal-level crime.

[Racket_Man]

Since this is one of my "favorite" subjects:

Food Delivery Drivers get screwed left and right
1. several companies have single runs only rules -- this means less runs + more drivers + less hours. Even IF 2 orders are a block apart, they must be run as single runs.

2. split pay -- now this is becasue of the US DOL's 20% rule that states IF a tipped employee performs NON-tipped jobs (such as food prep, cleaning, dishes, trash, etc.) for more than 20% of their time clocked in that time must be paid AT MINIMUM wage. Now there are several states that are exempted from this rule because those states have NO tipped wage rates AND have minimum wages above and some well above the Federal mininum wage

3. vehicle use reimbursement --- this is where delivery driver really get screwed. Well you say, the companies charge a Delivery Charge and that goes right to the driver. NO NO NO. The company keeps that "convience fee" (unless you live in one of a few states that have laws compelling that fee to go directly to the employee) all to itself.

AND that delivery charge can range from as little as $1.25 to $3.50~!!!!!!

99% of the time Delivery drivers only get a small FIXED reimbursement per run no matter how short or long. it is the same if the run is 1/2 mile or 15 miles. Most drivers use their own personal vehicles. they have expences like repairs and maintenance (lots thereof), insurance (sometimes expensive insurance), car payments, and depreciation. They put miles and miles on their vehicle at their own expence. The reimbursement the company pays is a mere fraction (less than 50%) of the suggested IRS per mile reimbursement of 58 cents per mile of business use. AND the US DOL has stated that (paraphrasing here): "that TIPS can not be used to make up for unreimbursed business expences". BUT the companies have huge lobbying groups that keep (up untill recently) that reimburwsement low even though no one really knows how the companies calculate the reimbursement.

The BIG problem is that most customers see the words DELIVERY CHARGE and assume that DC goes directly to the driver as a 'tip" (not so --see above) AND most of the companies do little to dispell this "myth". SOme try but put the "disclaimer" in their adverts in 2 point font that no one can really read or see.


Things used to be very diffrerent many many moons ago. Runs were plentyiful doubles, triples and quads were common, drivers were paid minimum wage and were reimbursed at the going IRS rate.

Then the push for more profit began around 12 years to. Then in 2008 the huge gas price spike hit and raw product prices went skyhigh. well everything went up EXCEPT driver pay and reimbursement.

[Lace Neil Singer]

That doesn't apply to pizza delivery drivers over here, thank goodness. At the petrol station, we get quite a few drivers coming in to fill up. They turn their receipts in and get full reimbursement for fuel. Most are on mopeds tho, rather than using cars; I guess that's how the pizza companies save on fuel.

[Crazedclerkthe2nd]

To me a big part of the problem is that workers don't know their rights.