And yes we know this STILL goes on

[Racket_Man]

http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/...age_theft.html

and the governement agencies tasked with handling wage and hour complaints state and federal are understaffed enough to not be able to do much about it.

Who looses???? we the wage slaves do.

[RedRoseSpiral]

They did this to me at McDonalds in St. Louis. I quit with in a month with no notice because I will not be taken advantage of.

[Nekojin]

I had one manager try to do this to me - tried to force me to clock out and then do closing clean-up. I pointed out the law. I was fired a few weeks later for "unrelated" matters.

[Rageaholic]

I've been asked questions like that in interviews. What do you do if your shift is about to end, but you can't get in contact with the person who's clocking you out? What I'd like to say is "What kind of stupid policy is that and who's the asshole who thought it would be a good idea?", but I end up dancing around the issue. A lot of these questions seem designed to see how much you're willing to be screwed over to be a team player.

Shame of these corporations for trying to guilt people into accepting less than they deserve.

[Andara Bledin]

What needs to happen is that more and more publicity be done. The more the general public knows about how companies are breaking the laws (and governments are ignoring it), the more likely public pressure will cause change.

It really is a shame that people can report these places to their own labor boards and just get ignored because it's too prevalent. Talk about a sign that there's a problem and whatever the penalties are, they're insufficient.

[BrenDAnn]

C-Store corp learned the hard way not to fuck with people's pay. They were sued for not paying employees for time worked a few years back. Ever since then, we've been under strict orders to make sure we're clocked in if we're doing ANYTHING at work, and clock out on time, no matter what. Hell, I even have to keep track of the phone calls I get and make sure I get paid for THOSE. Maybe if a few more companies got hit with suits like that, they'd learn something. I doubt it, though.

[HYHYBT]

When I started with McDonald's, they would clock closers out 1 hour after closing. This was a *good* thing! The punches had to be entered before the system could be closed out for the day, which had to be done before we could leave. So they put us in for an hour, and any left over after we were actually ready to go was free money. There were rare times it took a few minutes longer, but the average was distinctly in the employees' favor.

When I was a manager, there were times I adjusted times to make them look more favorable, but *never* to cheat anyone. More like, for example, if during one of the short times where there was an edict that everyone *must* get a break even if they had too short a shift to need or want one, letting them skip their break and go home half an hour early instead if possible and fixing the punches so the office would be happy.

[Andara Bledin]

I suspect part of it has to do with the state the stores are in.

I know California at least gives lip service to being pretty aggro about businesses paying their workers for the time they work. As I've never had a job like that, however, I don't know how well that works for those who have those jobs.

[Pixilated]

My store is extremely strict about clocking in and clocking out, especially at closing. Closing is at 9:15; if the closing staff is still around a long time afterwards, somebody is going to want to know why. And there's never been any question of doing an hour's worth of "off the clock" work. Those companies need to be held publicly accountable. They don't want to pay a living wage and on top of that they want an hour or so of free labour? That's disgraceful.

I've been asked questions like that in interviews. What do you do if your shift is about to end, but you can't get in contact with the person who's clocking you out? *snip*

What I'd want to say is, "Why is that MY problem? Isn't that why you've got a site manager?"

[Rageaholic]

And they say unions are to blame.

[Panacea]

http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/...age_theft.html

and the governement agencies tasked with handling wage and hour complaints state and federal are understaffed enough to not be able to do much about it.

Who looses???? we the wage slaves do.

Well, hold on to your hats. In order to get Obama's picks for judges confirmed, the Senate had to make a deal to get an up or down vote. Part of the deal was removing 2 members of the NLRB who Obama put in as recess appointments.

The GOP wants to weaken the NLRB so companies can keep on screwing their workers. Until we get a tight labor market (ie more jobs than there are workers to fill them), they'll be successful at doing this.

[Glados]

I agree that more lawsuits would help slow these shady practices down. I still distinctly remember when my previous employer tried to hide such a suit from us lowly employees. (Note: When you are laying off hundreds of employees to send their jobs to India...is not the best time to discourage them from joining a class action lawsuit against the company)

We came to work one day to a new policy. We could not log into the computer until 2 minutes before our shift. We would now be punched in automatically upon entering the computer system. No explanation given for this major change.

We had previously been encouraged to log in early and prepare for our shift. We were required to be up to date on changes in company information and policy. This information was provided through a link on our computers. Failure to follow new procedures was grounds for immediate termination.

We were also required to be on the phone taking calls as soon as we punched in. I worked in a major call center with constant high queues and no breaks between calls. This left no time to review the daily updates on the clock.

Several days later, the class action notice arrived in the mail. A group of employees started a class action. The company tried to use the defense that the law allows for reasonable time to log in as unpaid time.

The courts ultimately ruled in favor of the employees. The judge determined that any required job function must be on paid time and that reviewing what amounted to training material is not a necessary part of logging in. The ruling resulted in an undisclosed settlement being reached. Considering the size of the payouts...it had to be in the millions.

***The settlement was confidential but I declined to participate in the lawsuit. I signed no confidentiality agreements and can therefore speak freely about the situation.