Posted on 04/22/2015 1:56:12 PM PDT by SoFloFreeper
The National Retail Federation is warning that a possible change to overtime rules could negatively impact retailers.
“This summer, the Department of Labor is expected to propose changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act that would strip retail and restaurant managers of their salaried positions in favor of hourly pay and enact a limit on how managers are able to spend their time on the job,” the NRF noted in a press release.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Unions rule!
He was elected on his promise to fundamentally destroy America — and he is dead serious about doing it.
You get a Kewpie Doll.
Anyone think the NAZIs are not in power?
They are following the history of that German Party to the tee.
It will also likely amount to fewer people employed and more people working under the table and cheating on their taxes to the extent possible.
And Walmart pays the wages and benefits for them to do what is dictated. The workers hav e an option on whether or not they are willing to work under the guidelines of the employer.
Still can't see how the Federal government is justified in making the rules and throwing a huge wrench into the works.
I am not aware of any past or present FLSA requirement that employees must be paid in 8 minute increments. You may be confusing the allowable time clock rounding rules under FLSA for hourly workers.
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/7-minutes-labor-law-60768.html
At my present company we use a 7 minute rounding rule and pay in 15 minute increments. This is typically done to allow for shift workers starting and stopping work at the same time but lining up to use the same time clock. It is also done for the ease of payroll calculations and accounting. But time rounding is not required under FLSA and some employers pay to the minute or round to 5 or 10 minute increments. This is allowable under FLSA but consistency and written policies are key – in other words you can’t change the rules in the middle of a work week or pay period and you have to give employees sufficient notice of a change in time clock/rounding rule policy.
Where I work, if an employee’s start time is 8:00 AM, they can punch in up to 7 minutes before 8:00 AM and the clock rounds their punch (for payroll purposes, the amount of time paid – their actual punch time is always retained in the system) up to 8:00 AM. However if they punch in 8 minutes before 8:00 AM the clock rounds their punch down to 7:45 AM. And it works the same way for out punches, punch out at 5:07 PM rounds to 5:00 PM but punching out at 5:08 PM rounds to 5:15 PM.
This is acceptable as long as the rounding rule is not applied only to benefit the employer.
We do occasionally have employees abuse the rounding rules, purposely punching in 8 minutes early and or 8 minutes late, i.e. gaming the system in order to get unauthorized overtime. This is not a payroll issue as we have to pay them for the additional time under the rounding rules, it is however a disciplinary issue.
We alert managers when we see possible rounding rule violations and ask them to address it with the employee and if necessary and to write them up if it was truly a violation and FWIW, we in PR do not know if the manager/supervisor asked the employee to clock in early or if the employee really couldn’t punch out earlier or if the employee had punched in 8 minutes early but then stood around and did nothing for 8 minutes or stopped working at exactly 5:00PM but then stood at the time clock and waited 8 minutes to punch out.
But whatever the reason, we still have to pay the employee per their actual punches and per the rounding rules; however I do tell managers that while they cannot change their punches in the system, they can have the employee end their work shift 15 or 30 minutes early either that day or another day within the same work week if it was truly a violation in order to not pay the employee for unscheduled/unapproved overtime.
Some time clock systems allow managers to input daily or weekly work schedules and the time clocks will not allow punches 8 minutes before or 8 minutes after the start and end scheduled times without a manager’s physical override at the time clock. I would love to implement that at my present employer, but our production workers (we are a manufacturer) vary so much due to production needs, sometimes at the last minute, that our production managers and supervisors don’t want the burden of constantly updating schedules or overriding the clocks to allow early or late punches especially on 2nd and 3rd shifts, so we in PR assume the “honor system” and that supervisors when approving the electronic time cards, are actually paying attention to their employees’ punches. I also run a weekly overtime report that is given to the plant managers and the VP of Operations and managers, shift supervisors are held accountable for addressing to them, unauthorized overtime.
States often have their own labor laws that piggy back federal labor laws. The laws are sufficiently vague that regulators often reinterpret the laws when a new administration is in power..
Because they are not really managers, more like senior flunkies. Corporate tells them exactly how to do their job and no exceptions are allowed. Walmart sets the number of hours and what positions a store manager is allowed to schedule from the HQ in Arkansas.
I think you have no idea of what you are talking about. Under your reasoning, no one but the VP’s and up in any organization could be considered salaried and everyone else would be subject to hourly pay and OT. Is that what you are actually proposing?
There are rules regarding who can be classified as “Exempt”- salaried not subject to OT and those who must be classified as “Non-Exempt” - hourly and subject to OT.
http://www.flsa.com/coverage.html
Having to be accountable to the senior management of a company in terms of enforcing company standards and policies and controlling employee schedules as to not over (or under) schedule workers or pay unnecessary overtime per what the senior management mandates is absolutely the job of a salaried manager or supervisor. Just because they don’t have the authority to create and enforce their very own policies of their own choosing or the ability to have the final say on things like budget and setting corporate policies, the amount of hours and OT that they are responsible for, doesn’t make them a “flunky”.
The days of making it up on bonus are long gone.
Yes, a lot of companies have eliminated or reduced bonuses. But IMO no employer should be forced to pay bonuses (unless part of a signed employment agreement) or yearly COL increases, a guaranteed part of compensation. I’ve worked for companies both as an hourly and as a salaried employee that didn’t give any sort of bonus or any guaranteed yearly increases. I worked for a company for several years where I got excellent/outstanding yearly performance evaluations but because of budgeting restraints or economic down turns, didn’t get much or any increase in some years was just told “great job” and “thanks” (yea! I get to keep my job instead of my job being eliminated)
And at my previous employer (a job far below my previous employment in middle management and paid a salary, a job I had to take because I’d been out of work for a year and half and was just grateful to finally get back to work in a full time job), where my position was classified as non-exempt - hourly with a standard 37 hour work week, the owners of the company then changed our standard work hours to 40 hours per week but then they adjusted our hourly rate down so that we would still make the same weekly wage, telling us “this isn’t really a pay decrease because you are still taking home the same amount”.
Of course a lot of us called this BS as now we were working 3 hours more per week but still being compensated the same as when we’d been working 37 hours per week. It sucked but was “legal” and they actually told us “don’t like it – find another job”. After several months of searching, I finally found a much better job, a salaried job more in line with my skills and experience. And lot of my co-workers also left at around the same time I did. A company that does not fairly compensate their workers, is not competitive in the market place will lose their good and qualified workers to their competitors, much to their eventual disadvantage.
Salaried is just a convenient way to do paychecks with the PTO and attendance requirements at most places anymore.
I for one would never want to go back to being a non-exempt/ hourly paid employee.
For one thing I didn’t like the constrictions of being a non-exempt hourly employee. Being hourly and being limited to only working 40 hours per week as scheduled as to not be paid OT, having my working hours strictly monitored down to the very minute, also meant that I can’t work put in the extra time to work on and finish projects that gives me the opportunity to shine and advance. In my present salaried position, I often do research for work and answer emails off hours and I like being able to do so even if I’m not strictly compensated for it or paid OT for it.
Also being a salaried employee means that when our company shuts down/closes for the day because of a bad weather event, or as happened last year, a fire that shut us down for several days, being salaried, unlike our hourly associates, I didn’t have to cover my lost time out of my PTO bank.
At my present job as a salaried employee, I also have a good amount of flexibility and the ability with a company lap top to work from home when sick or for things like when having to be at home for work being done at my house, etc., not having to use my PTO time as I have pretty much a virtual office at home. And if we have a departmental lunch or an off site meeting, I’m not required to account for my time, unlike my hourly direct reports who have to record and have approved that they “worked” through their lunch as to not have their automatic unpaid hour lunch deducted.
Being salaried also means that I am guaranteed to be paid my weekly salary regardless of the number of hours I actually worked. On the up side that means that if I work less than my standard 40 hours per week, I still must be paid my full salary (unless under an FMLA leave or being a new hire or terminating my employment mid-week without working a full week). I do have to cover legitimate missed work time out of my PTO bank in full or half day increments but on the other hand, on the up side, if I get to work an hour late because of traffic or have to leave work an hour early because of a non work related appointment, I’m not expected to cover that lost time in less than full or half day increments, at least not where I work (some companies do it differently), with PTO as it is assumed that I’m working at least and often more than 40 hours per week on average. Of course abuses in that flexibility, salaried workers who continually abuse their flexibility and who in more weeks than not are actually working less than their 40 hours and as a result are not meeting their job requirements, goals and objectives, this becomes a disciplinary issue for their managers to address.
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