So I expect you to NOT do the same to me. Work for county government, exempt employees can only take leave in full day increments. can I be paid in comp time instead of overtime pay? Perhaps you should negotiate for comp time then. If the employee has a very clear work week of 40 hours and a contract with no wiggle room for the employer to require more, their hourly rate will be their salary divided by 40. (Ideally, youd do this with other coworkers, because the voice of a group often has more weight than the voice of a lone person.) The key is to pay exempt employees their weekly salary without any reduction for quality or quantity of work. Being salaried simply means that you get paid the same amount each pay period, regardless of how many hours you worked. OPs employers policy seems a bit extreme, but not completely different from my experience, which is that exempt folks can leave early *occasionally* without using PTO, but are generally expected to actually work at least 40 hours per week. If you work OT and youre non-exempt, you are paid time and a half, theres no circumstances that allow you to pay less, the OT law is really cut and dry. :) Its true that it has to round both ways so that ultimately it doesnt disadvantage the employee, but rather, evens out. FMLA is for companies that are 50 or more employees. I believe the answer is a little more nuanced than you laid out. Not just a weak union movement, but active attempts to downplay the benefits of unions. She was shocked to learn that I am free to come and go as I please most days because my boss knows the work will get done. Its that deep rooted We The People would NEVER think of such Socialistic Things. "time and a half") for each hour over and above 44 hours per week. The company isnt docking the pay. So then when it comes to well why do I have to use PTO when I work less, given that other time I work more, it suddenly doesnt sound so reasonable, because the issue isnt offsetting the busy times. Minimum daily pay. That puts her up to about 49 hours a week on average. However, I agree with your underlying point that government-related exempt employment tends to mean theres a big thumb on the scale when measuring out time worked. Horrible. These include lawyers, IT professionals, high level managers, many workers in health care etc. In the non-US country where I work, this kind of thing is very common; I had to use my comp time within the month, or within the quarter, use-it-or-lose-it. Sign up to get the latest HR news, trends, and insights delivered to your inbox. More commonly the annual hours are divided by 48 to account for 2 weeks of vacation and 10 federal holidays (a relatively common offering). They dont say if its for sick/vac. I actually have started asking about this early in interviews along with broader conversations about flexibility and benefits. If youre getting all of your work done, its okay that you have some downtime while youre in the office. Or did you have to sit around doing busywork/pretending to work? You work overtime without pay, and if you work fewer hours they can force you to take your precious vacation time? Lisa Stam practices all aspects of employment, labour and human rights law, and has a particular interest in legal issues involving technology in the workplace and the various methods by which people continue to mess things up with technology. That sucks. Also if only some employers can use it, why would anyone ever agree to work for them when they can work somewhere that doesnt try this nonsense. So there are trade offs on both sides but yeah, no. On the other hand, if were bumping up against a deadline, Im here til its done. Thats a strange and wrong way to look at this, or any, law. I hate being exempt for this reason. Are there really any benefits to being exempt? Isnt it illegal to dock the pay of exempt workers? The FLSA's only requirement is that non-exempt employees receive at least minimum wage for all hours worked, as well as overtime compensation for any hours worked in excess of 40 hours in a single workweek at a rate of at least one and one-half times their regular hourly rate of pay. To the contrary, I have been overworked routinely. Cut rate unions are like cut rate watered down gas. Irritatingly, the answer is yes. Instead its banked and used as she needs in the other 10 months of the year thats much slower. And its garbage. But since that was only a few times a year, and the job paid well, it was a trade-off I was okay making. You can also join us in the fact termination is super easy for an employer with a hair up their butt and that we may or may not get paid equally, depending on who is the person in charge! your standard hours of work for a period of 2 or more weeks cannot exceed an average of 40 hours in a week. Honestly this sounds perfect. Deductions from pay are permissible when an exempt employee: is absent from work for one or more full days for personal reasons other than sickness or disability; for absences of one or more full days due to sickness or disability if the deduction is made in accordance with a bona fide plan, policy or practice of providing compensation for salary lost due to illness; to offset amounts employees receive as jury or witness fees, or for military pay; for penalties imposed in good faith for infractions of safety rules of major significance; or for unpaid disciplinary suspensions of one or more full days imposed in good faith for workplace conduct rule infractions. Not on a regular basis, but every once in a while. If on the other hand, the employment agreement builds in flexibility for the employer regarding hours of work, by for example saying something like: then the employee is likely not entitled to compensation for time worked beyond their regular 40 hours, unless its true overtime, which we will discuss next. When youre billing time, you need to track it whether youre exempt or not, so under 40 hour is noticeable and needs a reason, hence PTO. But before my current job, at least I used to get comp time for going over 40 hours.]. Dropping a note here that OP (and this is an evergreen comment) should always check their state laws. Id argue that (in most cases) its demoralizing and bad management, but legally they can do it. If a salaried employee is consistently working fewer than 40 hours, they may face disciplinary action from their employer. In my experience, most people usually take this strategy: Or you can ask for a salary thats high enough that it feels like a fair trade for the number of hours youre working, even without additional flexibility or time off.. Im not going to nickel and dime you over things like that. I know of no exceptions. The U.S. also has some icky you should be grateful to have a job thing going on too. On the bright side, once youre out of PTO they can only dock your pay for full day absences, and any half days get rounded out, not up? The people (stockholders, etc.) Effective April 1, 2023, the federal minimum wage is set at $16.65 per hour. It goes well with the other post about the raising of minimum wages. We have a set amount of work we have to get done every week, and it will definitely sometimes push you over 40 hours a week, especially during our busy seasons, but we have an extremely flexible work from home policy and a lot of leeway to go to appointments, etc. If she had been paid 1.5x and then they rolled it back to .5 then that would not have been such a sweet victory on her part :(. Non-exempt means that the employee qualifies for overtime wages. I worked for a business that was exactly like this and it ticked everyone the hell off. The way you get comp time for that is, you take a long lunch with a friend during the slow period. My theory: its a mix of a lingering puritan work ethic culture, many people just accepting it because they dont realize things could be different, a weak union movement, and a presidential system of government (rather than parliamentary) that makes it a lot harder to pass sweeping new legislation. So far its been working well. The only exception is that I worked at one place where you could accumulate up to 40 hours to take off later if you work overtime. It has always irked me that if I work 50 hours for the period Mon Thurs, that I still have to use a vacation day on Friday because I wont be present (butt in seat) on Friday. On your side, youre not supposed to look at every hour over 40 as extra. Youre getting paid to do a job, not for each individual hour. Overtime is paid at 1 times the regular rate (i.e. Is your output what it is supposed to be? We looked at it for some employees when the new exemption threshold was in the pipeline a few years ago, and that was the first Id heard of it. I had not taken a week off in a year and a half, and when I finally took a week off recently, I regretted doing it, because the 60+ hours of new work that came in during my vacation was sitting there when I got back to work, and it took me over a month to catch up, because I get 60+ hours of new work every week! . Its not driven by the existence of PTO, but its still a dumb and demoralizing policy. I dont police our employees comp time, vacation time or comp time. But if you request a day off say Monday, and you are out of Vac,Sick leave, PTO or company does not offer any, the company is allowed to dock you one days wages. Copyright 2007 - 2023 Ask A Manager. Over 40 hours in a work week is OT, in California over 8 hours in a day is OT as well unless you have a CBA in place. This was my last job, with an additional nasty twist. The total number of hours sounds fine when you average it, but OP isnt able to work it that way. Im a lawyer at a large company, salaried, and while we do work more than 40 hours often, we are also allowed a great deal of flexibility in terms of scheduling, we arent nickle and dimed over PTO (we can leave for appointments, etc., without using PTO or sick leave), we dont have to punch a clock, and we are encouraged to have work-life balance. If youre salaried, your pay isnt docked when you work fewer hours. When I worked for a municipality, I worked extremely long hours double or over double 40 hours and received no comp time just set vacation hours that you accrue, no bonus for working late, youre just doing your job. Their approach to time off was just one symptom of a really poor culture. What does non-exempt mean? This means you cannot, in some cases, simply divide a salaried non-exempt employee's weekly pay by 40 and call it good when you are calculating time-and-a-half for overtime purposes. Yeah mine as well and Im salaried, non-exempt. I want to add that if you live in California, PTO is legally considered wages. ( There's a more detailed explanation here .) Also, an employer is not required to pay the full salary in the initial or terminal week of employment, or for weeks in which an exempt employee takes unpaid leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act. Down with the socialism!!!!!!!!. I have a child with special needs and have already used or scheduled more than 50 hours PTO for his various appointments, upcoming surgery, etc. If an actual practice is found, the exemption is lost during the time period of the deductions for employees in the same job classification working for the same managers responsible for the improper deductions. Ive worked other places where exempt means 40 hours minimum and theres not one person who doesnt notice the flexible hours dont go both ways. an acquaintance I recommended proselytized to all my clients (with singing), employee lied about his mom dying, coworker is a magpie, and more, my new employee is the parent of my childs bully, how to ask for a raise (because you need to), our remote employees were excluded from our company appreciation day, people keep asking why I wear pantyhose, career coach wants me to use someone elses job title, and more, the faked heart attack, the very smart dog, and other (amazing) stories of pettiness at work. But when I have a doctors appointment and get to (a) work from home and (b) take two hours off in the middle of the day, its worth every mile of my 55-mile each way commute. If they wanted to dock your pay for example, you run out of PTO and now they are making you take time unpaid there may be a legal element at play. Plus thats not the kind of world I want to work in.. Just like its worse on your body to rotate schedules since you never acclimate properly, unlike a profession that has you working a steady 70hr week at any given time. No. Its not reasonable for them to expect that they can nickel and dime you on hours but you wont do the same in return. But they can take back vacation anytime they want. Actually just check this page: https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs70.htm If an employee who is scheduled for more than eight hours reports for work, he or she must be paid for at least four hours. God I am glad I dont work there anymore. She said that they do not: as a salaried employee I dont get overtime or comp time for those hours worked.. I absolutely cannot wrap my head around why anyone would accept to work under those conditions let alone EVERYONE who does. This is a bit of a digression, but from what Ive read elsewhere on this blog it actually is legal to have a system that rounds 8:01 to 8:15 every time, as long as it also rounds the employees punch out at 5:01 to 5:15. So the first thing I'd do in your shoes is to make sure that you're correctly categorized as exempt. If a salaried employee is consistently working fewer than 40 hours, it could be an indication - that they are not fulfilling their job requirements. Then realizing that they had to pay OT, took advantage of the fluctuating option. For example, an assistant manager making $48,345 per year earns about $26.94 per hour, based on a workweek of 40 hours. BC Minimum Daily Pay. Exempt means exempt from receiving overtime pay as per the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Can my employer draw a hard line on working 40 hours per week during our slow season when I dont get any consideration for working so many extra hours during our busy period? Dammit, I screwed it up; its still just $25 additional OT, so $1675 for non-exempt hourly. Thats crappy. Sort-of exception: your supervisor can let you leave up to 59 minutes early, and higher officials can give you more (our director sometimes gives us 4 hours the day before a federal holiday). Its why Im sitting on a trove of vacation hours. If employees are non-exempt, it means they are entitled to minimum wage and overtime pay when they work more than 40 hours per week. Unaddressed employee claims for unpaid hours of work and overtime can be a big liability. Yikes. Silicon Valley. Well in my case Im currently a salaried government employee, so things are different. It could just be the language used but this feels like exactly the conversation Id want from my boss in this kind of situation. If you are out of AL and SL, you may be able to qualify for leave donation, where another employee can donate some of their AL to help you out. It is possible for an employer to require that the employee work more than this, but in this case an agreement must be made in writing and the employee must be provided with this information sheet about hours of work and overtime pay first. Exactly- theres always work to be done in my role. Are you just talking federal? Basically, with *salaried* non-exempt employees, you can, if your state doesnt forbid it, set the OT rate at .5 rather than 1.5 if you meet certain criteria. We not only worked so much extra time, but then had to give up flex time in order to get our full paycheck. Ick. You have to hit 40 hours every week, but you do get paid for billable overtime (only flat time, not 1.5x). But I also like money vs time off too, Id work 70 hour weeks forever if I was getting paid as non-exempt, haha. Is it 100% balanced every pay period? If the employee is ready, willing, and able to work, deductions may not be made for time when work is not available. At the 44 hour threshold the employee would be entitled to be paid at time and a half. and that they are entitled to be compensated for any time they work beyond those 40 hours. Non-exempt employees are usually paid an hourly wage or earn a salary that's less than a minimum amount determined by the DOL. (Apologies for the link moderation, but this is much more efficient than copy/pasting all the text!). If anything, I have experienced the opposite for decades: exempt workers that are given more than 40 hours of work on a consistent basis and expected to work extra hours every week to get the job done. But like so many things, its perfectly legal. If the employment agreement specifies a very clear 40-hour work-week, with no wiggle room for the employer to require them to stay late or come in for special events, then the employee could take the position that their salary compensates them for 40 hours only and that they are entitled to be compensated for any time they work beyond those 40 hours. This is the kind of pennypinching employer who is SHOCKED when someone finds a better job right at the beginning of their industrys busy season. Non-exempt employees (salaried or otherwise) are not allowed to receive comp time. Business is like Las Vegas the house (or company) always wins. I said OK. Question for the OP I am also salaried and when I go under 40 hours a week, I have to use Vacation time (we dont have PTO but separate Vacation and Sick time accruals) BUT if I go over 40 hours, I get comp time. If you work any part of a day you MUST be paid for that day. Im astounded by the variations in normal paid in different countries. Overtime Pay Overtime Pay The federal overtime provisions are contained in the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). In my office, if you run out of PTO you have to take unpaid leave. 45.19 hours is only the average if there were no vacations or holidays. These include lawyers, IT professionals, high level managers, many workers in health care etc. Salaried employees are paid to produce specific output, regardless of time or location. The fact that an employee is paid a salary does not change that they are entitled to compensation for all the time that they spend working. If you think your workplace needs a tune up, feel free to reach out. Toni's weekly salary for that week should be no less than $713.00 (40 hours at $15.50/hour ($620.00), plus 4 hours . Privacy Policy and Affiliate Disclosures, my manager is nickeling and diming me on vacation time while I'm working 27 days in a row. I think the laws are different now and my former employer probably couldnt get away with our every other Friday or Monday off during the summer That was a great policy! Overtime pay eligibility: Overtime wage for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek at not less than 1.5 times the employee's regular rate of pay. Under the new rules that went into effect Jan. 1, 2020, employees who make less than $684 a week (or $35,568 a year) must receive overtime pay, even if they have been classified as "exempt." In addition, highly compensated employees must be paid overtime if they are paid less than $107,432 a year. Some better, some worse. If we [government workers] have to charge time like this, so should be private sector.. Catching up is more work than its worth, so I use them in onsie/twosies as needed for kid-related schools stuff. If this LW is eligible, they should perhaps consider applying for FMLA regarding their childs care. That should have said normal *paid* leave. Another was a company with about 2000 employees that only applied PTO in four or eight hour increments. I miss being hourly. No mechanism to take leave even if I wanted to. Just because there is no law stating vacation time must be offered doesnt mean there arent any laws governing vacation time. See Alisons link up above. At my last job, everyone got 20 days of paid leave, with the option of buying an additional 20. Most salaried employees I know average right around 40 a week 45-50 is a normal amount to work during a busy/crunch period, but thats usually only a few to several weeks a year. My view may be a little skewed because my company does pay OT (flat time, not time + 1/2) to exempt. That means higher taxes though and the same people taking advantage of these workers are the same ones in the politicians back pockets, who are getting these loop holes added. Many times, Id go into the office anyway, on those closure days, in order to get work done in peace and quiet. Im just curious, not looking to chastise one position or the other. I decided to insist that my people use up comp time within just a couple of months of earning it. Examples of employees who can receive a non-exempt salary include: As an entry-level employee (Im guessing from the username), you might not have that kind of environment, and there might be times where you have to resort to busywork. Employers are not required by the FSLA to pay for extra time worked when the total is less than 40 hours. Engineering consulting here: This is the norm for us too. So sucky manager SM for short was terrible. Knowing that other commentors on these boards work, and seeing the times that they comment multiple times a day, I know Im not the only one. If youre going to insist that I should compensate you for 15 to 30 minutes here or there, then I am going to be the same kind of stickler on the front end. Yes the other guy was paid 10% more to work nights while she wanted day to cover his shifts 3/5th of the week! It would be calculated by taking your weekly salary and dividing by average number of days your work usually 5. There are many categories of workers who are exempt from overtime and hours of work legislation. As someone who has worked for almost 20 years in government, those people dont seem to understand the paradigm. It seems that the rest of the year it is mostly 40 hour work weeks or less if you take PTO. Deeply. That does make a bit more sense. My maple-coated heart feels so bad about that. I also thought that there were definitions and rules in place such that working any part of a 4 hour period is considered working the entire 4 hour period and working whatever number of days in a week is considered working all the days in a week, so if you work 6 hours, legally, you have to be paid your full salary. Her annual salary would decrease because of the docking of the pay, but her hours worked would stay the same. You need 50 for it to apply. https://canons.sog.unc.edu/understanding-the-fair-labor-standards-acts-fluctuating-workweek/. One of the many ways I knew my boss was a good one was when she rejected my request for a couple of hours off because she didnt want me to use PTO for it, because she knows I put in my time/get my work done! In our connected age, work often creeps beyond the set hours of the workday. We are required to use comp time before Vacay or Sick, too. Theres nothing in the law that requires that time to be paid. Unions are completely customizable, though. Yeah, I dont understand this, either. That excludes sick leave which is a separate bucket, also legislated. Non-exempt salaried employees receive fixed wages for working a determined number of hours . Yeah, its saying that it depends on your state. The math theoretically already accounts for that. As I said, I would definitely push back and definitely find a group if you can. January 22nd, 2001. Many non-exempt employees work in construction, maintenance or other jobs that require physical labor. We understand the exempt laws and having to pay full salary even if they do not work a full day, and so forth. Its an alternate method which, based on my understanding, pays non-exempt workers a base salary then any hours over 40, if the workers number of hours fluctuates each week, at 1/2 the hourly rate of the weekly salary divided by the total hours worked that week. Non-exempt (hourly paid) employees granted compensatory time off for hours worked over 40 in the first week of the pay period must be allowed to take the time off in the second week of the same pay period in which it is worked; and . This place made salaried people swipe a time clock twice each day along with the non-exempt folks, but of course when we worked long ours there was nothing to show for it money-wise, or even in good will. money. They must be paid for hours worked, full stop. Customer Service Reps have to be at the phone. Im looking for another job for just this reason, but Im wondering if I have any way to push back with my current employer. I think its more about the spirit of the law, rather than the letter here. yes. Businesses are facing difficult financial decisions in the wake of the pandemic and cutting an employees salary might seem like a good idea, particularly if they are slacking off. This is per statute 541.602(b)(2). I agree it wouldnt work as well for OP or other jobs with a longer busy period and slow period, but the period of time comp time can be saved could be lengthened or shortened to accommodate the needs of the role and to encourage employees to take time off. The government makes all the decisions here. It might just be a math trick to get to 1.5 the weekly hourly rate, but I know its often referred to, if people know about it, as one half time. Only if its for a full day though.
Washington State Soldiers Home, Physician Independent Contractor Vs Employee, Greenwich Elementary School Rankings, Articles S